


Company and Confidence

by WayFish



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: ALL the issues, Class Issues, College, Daddy Issues, Hotel Sex, M/M, Mommy Issues, Origin Story, Original Character(s), Porn With Plot, Rent Boy, Selfies, Sex Work, Sexual Assault, Sexual Identity, Wesley is a lush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-04-02 16:45:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 37,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4067269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WayFish/pseuds/WayFish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They man gave him an extra $200 anyway and Wesley kissed him goodbye.</p><p>He rode the elevator alone and tipped the doorman on his way out.</p><p>James Wesley's Grindr profile said that he was 21, but he was actually 19. He had midterms that week.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Two-Hundred Hotel Bathrooms

James Wesley loved hotels.

The doorman of the Park Hyatt gave him a harsh look and held the door. Wesley wondered if the man recognized him. He smiled and ducked inside.

Wesley especially loved hotel lobbies.

It was more crowded than usual. A wedding party, women in pale blue dresses and men with tuxedos and matching blue bow ties, posed for pictures on the dark spiral staircase. A man with a camera told them all to smile.

There was just something about the high yawning ceilings and all that flattering light. He loved the smart snap of his shoes on the gray marble, the cold chemical clean air, and the soft aimless chatter that enveloped him.

The man with the camera said, “Just the bride now.”

Wesley checked his phone. He’d been given a room number. The concierge was staring at him so he put his hands in his pockets and slipped into the elevator between one of the bridesmaids and a cadre of midwestern looking tourists.

“That’s a beautiful dress,” he said to the bridesmaid.

She had long brown curls and dark eyes and she laughed at him. “No it’s not.”

The elevator stopped and the tourists got off. They kept going up. “Well, I think you look lovely,” Wesley said.

The elevator stopped again. The bridesmaid stepped out into the hall, smoothing out the skirt of her blue dress.

“My room’s at the end of the hall,” she said, with a coy smile.

“I wish I could. But I have a-- ah --previous engagement.”

The bridesmaid snorted and laughed and the doors pulled closed. She really was very beautiful, he thought. Alone, Wesley checked his hair and straightened his collar in the darkened screen of his phone. The elevator carried him all the way to the top. He checked the room number again. And outside the door he straightened his shoulders, took a deep breath, and knocked twice.

James Wesley had a tradition. Well. A habit. A ritual.

It went like this:

Men-- wealthy men --would contact him online.

Wesley was about to knock again when the door was wrenched open. There was a broad man in a fine dark gray suit, barking into a cell phone on the other side. He hardly looked at Wesley and waved him inside.

These wealthy men would often invite him to a hotel, like this one, the sort designed to denote status.

Wesley stood in the entry, feeling lame, holding his backpack. It was a full suite; living area, small kitchen, and french doors that opened to a broad balcony.

Wesley sometimes wondered, but certainly never asked, why it was that they bothered. He didn’t need to be impressed. He just needed to be bought.

He had pages on a number of escort sites. Tonight’s wealthy man had contacted him under the handle “Chairman616”. There’d been no picture on the profile. But Wesley had liked the name. It was ostentatious. Ods were good that the man would tip well.

The man crossed the room to stand like a mountain in front of one of the high windows, blocking out the light, and talking fast into his phone, an edge of agitation in his voice. He turned around with a scowl and pointed Wesley toward the bed.

He would have sex with these men-- this man.

Wesley toed off his shoes and sprawled out on the soft grey sheets. He did not listen to whatever it was that the man was saying on the phone.

By Wesley’s guess, this man was local. Married, perhaps. There was no luggage in the room, no sign of occupancy at all. 

After, after the men had finished, and they had paid him, and they’d fallen asleep or whatever, Wesley would go into the bathroom and take a picture of himself with his phone.

He wondered what this bathroom would look like, maybe marble countertops, certainly nice lighting. He had over 200 picture on his phone, over 200 luxury hotel bathrooms.

The man hung up his phone, tossed it onto one of the bedside tables. “I apologize-- for the delay,” the man said, extending a hand to him. “I’m Will--

“You don’t want to tell me your name,” said Wesley, smiling up at him.

“Of course.” The man had an endearingly soft face. He shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Forgive me, I don’t know what I-- It’s been a trying day.”

“Of course, that’s why I’m here.” Wesley stood, arching up on his toes to kiss the man gently. He made a soft, surprised little sound. Wesley helped him out of his suit jacket, folded it carefully and laid it aside. “You just relax. Let me take care of everything.”

The man caught Wesley with one broad palm at the small of his back and kissed him again.

“Just one more bit of business first, though” Wesley said, apologetic.

“Of course.” The man took a wad of cash from his pocket and pressed it into Wesley’s hand.

Wesley didn’t bother counting it. He shoved the bills in his pocket.

He made the man a drink. He asked, in his sweetest tone if the man had eaten yet that evening. “You can’t work hard all day and then deny yourself a good meal,” Wesley scolded and called down an order for room service; goat cheese tortellini with english peas and radish, a bottle of 1997 Cabernet Sauvignon Abreu Madrona Ranch, and the rhubarb galette for dessert.

Wesley sucked the man’s cock before the food arrived.

He didn’t usually drink with clients, but the Cabernet was too good to pass up.

After, the wealthy man fucked him.

After, Wesley excused himself to use the shower. He was right about the marble, pale white italian. The mirror had a beautiful gilded frame. It took him a couple tries to get a picture he liked.

The man asked Wesley how much it would cost for him to spend the night.

“Unfortunately, I can’t stay,” Wesley said, putting on his best pout. “I have homework to do.”

They man gave him an extra $200 anyway and Wesley kissed him goodbye.

He rode the elevator alone and tipped the doorman on his way out.

James Wesley’s Grindr profile said that he was 21, but he was actually 19. He had midterms that week.

  
Wesley lived in Greenpoint with his grandmother and the next morning at breakfast he slipped the $200 in crumpled bills under her coffee cup.

“No, don’t you dare!” She shoved the money back at him.

“You said the dryer was making a funny noise,” he said, and kissed her goodbye. She swatted him on thebutt with her newspaper as he passed and he yelped and laughed. “Don’t try hiding it in my room again. Call someone about the dryer.”

Wesley was studying architecture at The New School.

He had to run to catch the train. His grandmother was a warhorse of a woman, but she’d taken care of him after his parents died. She still made him breakfast every day before he went to class. And of course she didn’t know where the money came from, but he liked being able to take care of her.

He showed up to his Housing and Policy test a little late and a little tired, but he thought it went well. Wesley was the first person from his family to go to college. There was a paper due for Sustainable Design. The professor let class out early and told them to have a good spring break. Wesley checked the syllabus. Someone, some boy he’d been sitting next to all semester, though Wesley hadn’t bothered to learn his name, leaned across the aisle and asked him if he was doing anything interesting for the break.

“Um, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Haven't made up my mind,” he said. But the truth was that he’d completely forgotten.

“Cool, cool,” the boy said. “Do you maybe want to--”

Wesley checked his phone for new messages.

He’d gotten into a lot of good schools: Berkley, Brown, and Rutgers.  It was mostly to the credit of his grandmother, who’d threatened to beat him senseless if he ever pulled down less than perfect grades in high school.

He’d picked the New School because they’d offered him a scholarship and it kept him close to home.

That afternoon he went to a Hilton and gave a massage to a dad from Illinois. The room was messy, littered with open luggage, kids clothing and toys scattered on every surface.

His grandmother had wanted him to go into business or finance. But growing up in this city, he knew all of its cracks and flaws. He could see all of the ways that it didn’t work. He had this romantic notion that he could be part of fixing those things.

New York City was also the most saturated market for real estate development in the whole country. He liked that idea too. He liked the idea of nice things and money and not living in an apartment in Queens with his grandmother.

The dad from Illinois wanted to fuck his mouth.

Wesley’s first semester he got a work study job in the student bookstore, but it wasn’t enough. Even with financial aid it wasn’t enough for textbooks let alone rent or groceries. So he’d got another job tending bar at a club. And another waiting tables at a restaurant in Manhattan, the sort of place where he had to wear a white shirt and tie. He started falling asleep in classes and got an F in his freshman comp course. Then one night, during a dinner service at the resturant, a handsome middle aged looking couple offered, in a hushed tone, to give Wesley $1000 if he would come home with them for the night. They’d had champagne with their meal. They’d been celebrating their wedding anniversary. The man was dignified in the way that all men of a certain age were dignified and the woman had bright green eyes. He quit the restaurant job that night. Everything after that was easy.

The dad pulled Wesley’s hair and called him 'good boy', which Wesley hated. But he could upcharge tourists because they didn’t know better, so it was ok. An hour was nothing for $500. He washed his mouth out in the bathroom. The mirror had fingerprints and spots of toothpaste on it. The vanity lights overhead were yellow and watery.

Wesley scowled into the dirty mirror and snapped a picture.

He went back to campus. He had a group presentation in Urban Planning. It went ok. He was still thinking about what he’d do with a whole week off. As he was walking out of class, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

Chairman 616 wanted to book another appointment. 


	2. A Regular Basis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He went to his room and locked the door. In the envelope he found $5000 and a note on a plain white card. It was hand written. Wesley counted the money twice. Then again. And again. 
> 
> "For your company and confidence. --WF"

Wesley took a cab, courtesy of Illinois Dad.

At first he thought that maybe the address he’d been given was wrong. It was for a restaurant. The only clients that ever met him in public were women.

He called his grandmother before going in. “Sorry, Babtsya... No, I don’t know when I’ll be home.” It wasn’t quite dark yet. The man was waiting for him at a table by a window. Wesley could feel his eyes on him. “I... um, I’m going out with some friends from school. You know, end of mid-terms. Spring break just started.”

She scolded him for going out too much. He needed to focus more on his academics.

Inside the restaurant, a nervous looking waiter took his jacket and backpack and lead Wesley over to the table. The man stood to greet him, helped Wesley into his chair. It was awkward and sweet.

“I think I’m under dressed."

The man was wearing a black suit this time. “You look fine,” he said.

It occurred to Wesley then that the rest of the dining room was empty. “Do you own this place, or something?”

“A man such as myself-- I couldn’t take the risk of being seen with someone. But I did want to see you. So.” He gestured vaguely at the otherwise empty room.

"And what kind of man are you?"

Wesley was not the sort who frightened easily. And it could be frightening, sometimes-- doing this.

The waiter was back. “So, have you decided yet?” 

The man dismissed them with a wave of his hand. The waiter flinched like they'd been slapped, ducked their head and scurried away. 

“I am someone who enjoyed-- enjoys --your company,” the man said, bracing his big hands on the table. “As well as appreciates your confidence. I’m a man who is willing to pay for both.”

Something about the snarl of his mouth and the easy implied force of his gestures made Wesley sit back in his chair. Wesley was not frightened, not yet. But he saw the potential for it, for it to all go terribly wrong.

"But you only met me once." Wesley hadn’t taken any money. He could still leave.

"You made a strong impression," said the man.

And Wesley thought about his grandmother. And his bills. And the dryer that made a funny noise. And his eyes drifted down over the menu in front of him, the fine silver, and tall spindly wine glasses.

He put on a smile. “Well, let’s not negotiate business over our meal,” he said.

The man huffed a soft laugh. “Of course.”

It took the waiter some time to work up the nerve to return to their table. “Do you still need more time?” they asked shakily.

The man turned to Wesley with an expectant look. Wesley cleared his throat, ordered for them both: the gnocchi with braised rabbit and the lamb straccetti. They waiter mentioned that they made their own rose wine in house, which made Wesley curious, so he ordered that too. The waiter asked for Wesley’s ID and the man sent them away, silently, with just  a look.

“Refined taste for a college student,” the man said.

Wesley shrugged, and sipped his wine. It was tart, different from anything he'd ever had before and good. “I’ve only ever read about places like this,” he said. “I’m taking advantage of your kindness.”  

The food was excellent. Wesley had developed a real talent for maintaining empty conversation.

"So what are you studying?" the man asked.

It was a fine balance, saying just enough to keep them engaged, vague enough not to give himself away.

"Architecture."

The man gave him a long appraising look. "Sounds appropriate,  for a such an industrious young man."

Wesley bit back a laugh, and took a long drink of wine. They didn’t order dessert. He maybe drank a little too much wine. As they walked out of the restaurant Wesley took the man's hand, leaning heavily on his shoulder. He looked down at Wesley, question and perhaps a little confusion pulling his brows together. Wesley relished that he could manage such a thing, that he could surprise this man. They got into a large black town car. The man held the door for him.

“So, it was my hope that you might be available on a regular basis,” the man said, as they pulled into traffic.

Wesley hit a switch to roll up the partition. "How regular?"

“A few times a month, perhaps?”

“Alright.” Wesley pressed in close, kissing the shell of his ear, and reached down to stroke the man’s cock, dragging his nails a little over the fly of his pants.

“What do you think you’re doing? "

Wesley pulled the man’s belt open in one smooth motion. “Negotiating.

“So what are your terms?”

“$1000, for the night.”

The man sank down in his seat, spreading his knees wide. “That’s a fairly outrageous markup.”

“You know me, young and industrious."

Midtown traffic, this time on a Friday, was brutal. It was a long drive. The car took them to another hotel, a discreet entrance, another full suite. It was more classic in its design-- dark rich woods, a four poster bed, a pale blue on the walls, a terrace with a wrought iron rail -- and just as impressive as the last one.

The man sat down on the edge of the bed and Wesley went to him, not needing to be asked or told.

Later, after, the man disappeared into the bathroom. Wesley listened as he turned on the shower. He told the man he’d join him in a minute. But first Wesley got his phone out of his backpack and took a picture of his own reflection in one of the broad windows, framed by the rich draped curtains, surrounded by city lights.

Sometime in the middle of the night Wesley woke alone. The room was cold. There was light coming in from under the door and he’d definitely had too much to drink. His mouth was dry and he rolled out of bed with a soft groan. After a minute of feeling around in the dark he found his underwear and the man's discarded shirt, and pulled them on. He needed water and an aspirin and he stumbled, bleary eyed, out into the small living room. 

The man was in a fresh suit. And there were others, four or five rough edged looking guys, wearing leather jackets and leather boots. The man was writing in a ledger. There was a stack of sealed manila envelopes on the coffee table. They all turned to look at him.

“I’m sorry, I just needed-- water.” Wesley shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

The man set down the ledger and took Wesley by the elbow, steering him back toward the bedroom. “It’s alright. Go back to the bed. We’ll be finished in a moment.”

“I... Yeah. Ok.”

One of the men in the jackets snickered and whispered something to one of his friends. Something about it sounded familiar.

Wesley blinked hard and rubbed his eyes. "That guy called you a faggot," he said. "Or me. I don't know. I'm sorry." He was, very suddenly, wide awake.

The man paused. Something in his expression turned dark. Wesley was frightened now.

“Close the door. Wait for me.”

Wesley nodded. His head felt heavy and he shut the door behind him. He crawled back under the covers but he didn't sleep. He thought about the waiter from the restaurant. He thought about what was in the envelopes and hoped halfheartedly that he'd been dreaming. He may have been half asleep and hungover, but he knew he'd walked in on something he wasn't supposed to.

At some point the man got back into bed beside him, pressing along his back. And Wesley wondered if he could feel the rabbiting of his heart. He wondered if the man would kill him.

In the morning, they ate breakfast on the balcony: waffles, lots of fresh fruit  and strong coffee.

Wesley was still wearing the man's shirt. He tried to act normal. “It’s supposed to be warm today."

The first really warm day of the year, he thought. It would be summer soon. Wesley hated summer in New York; always muggy and crowded and loud.

"You aren't eating," the man said.

Wesley looked at the balcony rail and thought about what it would feel like to fall over the edge. "Not hungry." 

"You speak Ukrainian?” the man asked.

His coffee cup was nearly empty. Wesley reached across the table to refill it. "Enough to get by. My grandmother is from Ukraine."

Wesley shook his head. He'd never talked to a client about his family before. And if he were going to kill someone he thought that was how he would do it; push them off the balcony. It would look like a suicide. No one would be the wiser.  

"What I saw last night--"

"You didn't see anything." The man fixed him with a curious look. "I'd have thought that was covered in your fee?"

"I didn't know that you--" Wesley poked at his waffles, lifted his chin to meet the man's gaze. "I might need more."

The man cocked an eyebrow at him. "I thought we didn't discuss business during meals?" 

Wesley snorted. And the man caught him by the wrist. 

"Come here," he said. And Wesley went, letting the man pull him around the table and down to sit on his lap. "I just want to look at you a little while longer."

Wesley didn’t usually find his clients attractive. The man grabbed Wesley’s ass with both hands, pulled him closer. And he didn’t know if he found this one attractive, exactly. But something in the man’s force, the threat in his presence, his rough grip, it made Wesley hard. The man slipped a hand down the front of his briefs. And he couldn’t help it. His hips hitched-stuttered, up and back. His breath went short. 

The man’s expression turned wolfish. "How much more?

He knew it was juvenile-- stupid --to be this excited to play with such a sharp object. Wesley put his arms around the man's neck. “I don't know. What'll you give me?"

He curled the fingers of his free hand under Wesley’s jaw, eased him back for a better view. “I could give you a lot of things.”

There was a threat somewhere in his words and Wesley’s cheeks turned hot. He didn’t always-- didn’t usually --come when he had sex with a client. Wesley closed his eyes and bore down, slow at first, eased into a steady point-counter point. He arched his back because he knew it looked good. He wanted it to look good. Usually, it didn’t matter if he came. It was beside the point. But the man-- he kissed Wesley’s chest and shoulders so softly. He held him so-- completely. And he did come this time, fucking into the man’s large rough palm, breathing hard against the fingers on his throat. 

"Are you going to hurt me?"

The man released him, let Wesley collapse against his chest. He sounded-- hurt by the inference. "No. No, of course not." 

The man finished his coffee and called for another car to take Wesley home. Wesley dressed and gathered up his things. The man gave him an envelope on the way out.

"I'll send you details for next week?" he said.

Wesley almost fell asleep in the car. It was still early. He hoped maybe his grandmother would be asleep, that she wouldn't notice him sneaking in. But no, she was sitting at the kitchen table, reading her paper and drinking her tea, as though she hadn't moved since Wesley left her there the previous morning.

"What did they say about the dryer?" he asked.

"Something about the heating element. It's no good. Too old for new parts. We'll need a new one," she sighed.

"Don't worry about it, Babtsya." He kissed the top of her head. "We always figure things out. And it's a beautiful day." 

He went to his room and locked the door. In the envelope he found $5000 and a note on a plain white card. It was hand written. Wesley counted the money twice. Then again. And again. 

_For your company and confidence._

_WF_


	3. We Are Hipsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The man hadn’t contacted Wesley, yet. It had been four days. He’d said that he would. But he hadn’t. And Wesley kept checking his phone. He felt-- he didn’t know how he felt.  
> Wesley shook his head. "Yeah I'm fine. It was just... I had a weird client last week."

Wesley sat on his front steps and watched two uniformed men wrestle a stacked washer dryer out of the back of a van. They were both handsome in a blue collar kind of way; tattoos and big arms and short cropped hair.

James Wesley was not gay. Well. He didn't think that he was.

He'd have found the men more intriguing if they hadn't  shown up over an hour late. And even then, he couldn’t imagine what it would be like-- dating or whatever it was that people did. With his-- business being what it was, he hadn’t done much of that sort of thing. He wasn’t even sure how it would work.

One of the men, he caught Wesley’s eye, smiled at him. Wesley checked his phone. A few emails. No new messages.

There was only one person who knew about his-- entrepreneurial venture.

Her name was Necha. Wesley looked up and smiled when he saw her coming down the block.

She lived in the building across the street from Wesley's-- had lived there for the whole of her life, actually and they'd mostly grown up together.

"How's tricks?" she asked, dropping down beside him.

"That is never funny."

"It's always funny."

Necha was pre-med at Columbia.

“And it’s too hot to be alive,” she said, coiling up her long black hair and clipping it on top of her head. She popped open her bag and pulled out a tube of dark red lip gloss. Wesley turned on the front camera of his phone and held it up for her like a mirror.

"You’re a peach,” she said, and set to carefully applying the gloss. “I'm assuming business is good if you're  buying new appliances.”

Wesley was a little bit in love with her, in a way-- the way you couldn’t help but love tall, dark, beautiful, smart, and  literal girls next door.

"It's used,” Wesley said. “If I dropped that much money at once..." His grandmother would start to suspect, he thought, but did not say.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I know.”

Columbia was expensive. During the day Necha worked in the Queens Community Health Center. At night she tended bar at a strip club in Manhattan.

She put the lip gloss back in her purse. "Are you ok?" she asked. “You just went very far away.  

The man hadn’t contacted Wesley, yet. It had been four days. He’d said that he would. But he hadn’t. And Wesley kept checking his phone. He felt-- he didn’t know how he felt

Wesley shook his head."Yeah I'm fine. It was just... I had a weird client last week."

Her  freshly glossed lips pulled down at the corners. “Regular weird or bad weird?”

The men were arguing over the best way to lift the machine up the stairs. Someone walking by with a large dog on a chain waved to Necha, said something in Spanish that Wesley didn’t understand. She said something back, that he also didn’t understand but he found himself smiling dumbly at her anyway.

Necha was the sort of person that just knew everybody.

Working in the club, she knew a lot of people who did what Wesley did. She'd helped set him up when he was just starting out. Introduced him to some people who were more experienced. Pointed him toward some resources, like the free clinic where he got tested every couple week.

“Just weird,” he said.

Necha had a girlfriend, named Laura.

"Gal Pal and I are going to Sheep Meadow to drink sangria and laugh at hipsters. You wanna come with?”

Laura drove a pickup truck and dressed like one of the boys that Wesley went to school with. But she was nice and she made Necha happy.

“We are hipsters.” Wesley eyed her cut off shorts, her black tank top and red lips. “And I thought you were going to work?”

She smacked him on the arm. “You little shit.”

"Can’t, I have an appointment,” Wesley said. “Or I’m supposed to." He checked his phone. "But I’m going to be late!" he said, loud and pointed.

The men looked at him. And then he watched their eyes drift to Necha,

She laughed. "How about this, I'll watch after Franz and Hans if you meet up with us later?"

"Really?” Wesley was already getting to his feet, hiking his backpack up on his shoulder. “I'll do you one better. Dinner on me?"

"It's a date"

Wesley’s client lived in a brownstone in the upper east side. She was late 30’s-ish and opened the door to him wearing a paint covered work shirt, her red hair piled up on top of her head. She was beautiful. And nervous. Her apartment was full of easels and canvases, paintbrushes and discarded sketches on every surface.

"You're an artist? Like, for a living?" he asked

"That depends on who you ask," she said.

"Hey, none of that." Wesley tucked a stray hair behind her ear, and she flushed a gorgeous shade of pink.

Wesley liked men. And he loved Necha. And he liked eating pussy only a little more than he liked sucking cock. So he didn’t think he was gay, not just gay.

He like the way the woman tasted, the way she stroked his hair and face.

She stayed in bed after and Wesley let himself out. There was a mirror in the entry. Wesley stopped to comb out his mussed hair and took a picture.

The park was crowded by the time Wesley got there. He found Necha and Laura sprawled on a blanket, a bottle in a paper bag sitting between them. Laura was asleep with her snap-back covering her face and Necha had a text book in her lap. She hugged him, kissed him on the cheek.

“Dirty boy,” she said and scrunched up her nose.

Wesley’s face went hot. “I hate you.” He helped himself to a long pull from the indiscreetly disguised wine bottle.

“So tell me about your weird client.”

He looked over at Laura, snoring softly beside him.

“She’s out.” Necha took the bottle from him. “Talk to me.”

The man still hadn’t called. No email, or text. Nothing. “I just-- He’s really kind. He took me to dinner.” Wesley curled up beside her, put his head on her thigh. He wanted to tell her about the money, the men in leather boots, the empty restaurant, the way it felt when the man had his hands on him. But he'd been paid for a service. “We talked. He’s in-- some sort of business. And he’s nice. And I think that’s weird. And I'm afraid that it’s pathetic that I think that’s weird--”

“Oh honey.” She pushed a hand through his hair, nails scratching a little over his scalp.

He let out a long sigh, a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and let his eyes fall closed.

James Wesley was not gay. He liked sex with men and women and people in between. He liked hotels-- nice hotels. And maybe more than all of those things he liked the weight of the cash in his pocket and his best friend running her hands through his hair. He didn’t know if there was a name for that.

“Babe, it’s not pathetic.” Her fingers brushed over his cheek. “Just because you-- we --sell sex, that doesn’t mean we don’t form meaningful connections with people.”

They laid in the grass until the sun began to set.

Wesley took them to the same restaurant the man had taken him to. It was crowded with people this time. But the scared waiter from that night was there-- took one look at Wesley and got them a table on the patio. Necha pinched him under the table. “Wesley, this is-- we can’t pay for this,” she hissed.

“You’re not paying, I am.” He leaned around the table to whisper in her ear. “The guy, he’s also kind of loaded.”

Laura was looking over the menu with wide eyes. Necha elbowed her. “Let him order,” she said. “It’s like, his thing. He’s good at it.”

Wesley did order for them. And the food was good like last time. And there was just something about a good meal. They talked and drank and Wesley watched the girls drift closer together, watched them hold hands and lean close to whisper things he couldn’t hear. He checked his messages.  

Necha said something about dessert. Laura said something about going for drinks.

“I think... I’m gonna go, actually.” Wesley flagged the waiter down for the check.

Necha tugged on his sleeve. “No! Stay, please? It’s not even late.”

“No, you two have a good time.”

He paid the check and took the train to the village, to an apartment near the NYU campus. During dinner he’d gotten an email from a guy named Todd. Wesley had to knock twice and when Todd opened the door he looked-- young, maybe Wesley’s actual age, and a little harried.

“Um, that was fast,” he said.

He got beer for both of them. And Wesley sat on his futon-- not drinking --while the kidd paced and talked and talked.

“...I’ve had girlfriends. A lot of girlfriends, you know? I don’t think I’m queer. Is that offensive? I’m sorry. But I always-- I wanted to try it. And I know I could probably just go to a bar or something and find someone. But I was too nervous so--”

He’d left the money sitting out on the coffee table, which wasn’t really a coffee table, but a stack of milk crates with a board across the top. Wesley wondered where it had come from, if the cash came out of some trust fund or allowance from his parents. Probably.

“Hey.” Wesley held up a hand to stop him. “Come here.”

The boy stopped pacing and sat down beside him.

“You need to relax.” Wesley curled his finger in the collar of the boy’s t-shirt, kissed his neck and the shell of his ear. “It’s ok, really. I understand.”

They kissed for a while, in a way that reminded him of high school. Lots of hands and fumbling. It was late when Wesley finally left.

He was trudging down the steps to the train when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

The man-- WF, whatever that stood for --wanted to see him on Friday.

Wesley turned off his phone.

He made himself wait. 

Wesley made _him_ wait.

He didn’t reply until late the next day.


	4. A Face Full of Bruises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clients almost never asked Wesley for that-- for this. He was small, and young and those were the only parts of him that anyone ever wanted. He thought it was a shame, too.

Wesley used to think that good sex was something that you learned.

His first experiences-- bumble-fucking around with people --while initially exciting, had all been awkward and objectively bad. He'd been a gawky teenager; sloppy and overly enthusiastic, never sure what to do with his hands.

Well. Technically, he still was a teenager.

But still.

Classes started up again. And so did business as usual. Something about the change in season got into people. He bounced between classes and clients for weeks; stayed out and came home late every night to disapproving lectures from his grandmother and a mounting pile of homework.

Whenever he started to feel tired-- when his patience wore thin with all the lying --Wesley had to remind himself that it was better than the alternative.

It was a Friday and his last class was canceled. So Wesley took a cab into Manhattan. The client worked in advertising, or claimed to. He was from out of town, and wore an expensive suit. The hotel room was lavish to the point of absurdity-- big windows, marble, gold leaf and hardwood everywhere. He asked Wesley, at least three times, if he was a model or an actor.

“I could get you a commercial,” he said. “Target, maybe? Or one of those organic shampoo ads where kids run half naked through a field? What do you think about that?”

“I think we agreed on payment up front,” said Wesley.

Wesley had, of course, gotten better at sex. He was, if nothing else, a good student. And he’d thought of it as a craft, a set of skills which he’d developed over time.  

The ad man was a terrible kisser. The way he fucked was clumsy and too rough. Wesley wanted to stop, but he'd already taken the money.

Wesley’s opinion on the art and craft of sex had changed over time.

Half way through the ad man licked Wesley’s neck, from his throat almost to his ear. Not a kiss or a taste of his skin-- that he could have understood. No, it was a long lick, just like a dog. Wesley gasped in surprise. The ad man let out a self satisfied little noise.

Then he kept doing it.

Some people, Wesley thought now, were just bad at sex.

Hopelessly bad.

The ad man left a red mark on his chest. Wesley took a picture of it with his phone and went home to have dinner with his grandmother.

She made varenyky, which was his favorite, but he was too exhausted and simultaneously excited to really eat. He only picked at his plate and hoped she didn’t notice. They were doing the dishes when she said, "I already made a plate for you to take your girlfriend."

"Necha isn't my girlfrIend.”

"But you're still going over there?"

Wesley took the foil covered plate. "To study and watch a movie."

She patted his cheek and Wesley headed for the door before he could say anything else incriminating.

Necha lived with her dad, a large man with a thick Dominican accent. Wesley had never known him as anything other than Mr. Alvarez. And Mr. Alvarez had the same suspicions that he and Necha were together. He was, however, less than thrilled at the idea. He opened the door and greeted Wesley with what was more a grunt than actual words. Luckily Necha was close by to rescue him.

“Play nice, Dad,” she took the plate from Wesley and pulled him inside. "Is this what I think it is? Your grandmother is an actual saint,"

They made for her room and her dad called after them, "Leave that door open."

"I thought you said he was working,” Wesley hissed.

"Don't worry. He is. He just wanted to scare you first."

Mr. Alvarez was a paramedic. A few minutes later he appeared in the doorway of her bedroom in his uniform, a duffle bag on his shoulder. "No drinking. No inviting other friends over. No loud music. I don't want want to have to hear about it from the neighbors."

Mr. Alvarez usually worked night-shifts. It was the only reason that Necha could keep her own job from him. As far as he knew, she was a barista at a Starbucks.

"Yes sir." Necha shuffled over and kissed him on the cheek. "Goodnight and be safe."

“Goodnight, chica. And you.” He pointed an accusatory finger at Wesley, picked up his bag and left.

They listened to the front door close and lock behind him and Necha burst into laughter. Wesley groaned. "Why dose he hate me all of a sudden?”

Necha sprawled out on her bed and peeled the foil of the plate of food. “Because you went through puberty. How much time do we have?"

She could eat fast for such a tiny girl. Wesley couldn’t help but smile when she popped a while dumpling in her mouth.

"About 15 minutes. Is Laura coming over?"

"Naw, I’ve got homework,” she sighed. “I'm so ready for this semester to be over." Her bed was covered in papers and books.

"Yeah, same.” Wesley sat down beside her, picked up a textbook on biochemistry and flipped through the pages. “I got a C on my oral exam in Mandarin. And this guy gave me a rash today."

"You're learning mandarin? Let me see."

"I needed to take a language course. And America does a lot of business with China.” He pulled aside the collar of his shirt. “You know, lingua franca of the future, that whole thing."

"And this?" She touched his neck.

"Guy kissed like a golden retriever."

Necha snorted and elbowed him in the ribs. "Say something in mandarin."

His phone chirped. He had a new text message. “Gotta go, that’s my ride.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Ride?”

“Yeah.” Wesley checked his hair in her vanity mirror. “There’s a car downstairs.”

“From mysterious nice guy?”

“The one and only. I was late last time, because of the train. So he said he’d send a car for me."

Necha went to the window and pushed it open. There was a large shiny black SUV parked at the curb.

She let out a low whistle. “Is he in there? What does he look like?”

“Rich.” Wesley kissed her on the cheek and headed for the door. "Call you tomorrow?”

“You better.”

When Wesley stepped out onto the street a driver came around the car to open the door for him.

“Oy!”

Wesley looked up at Necha, leaning out of the window. “Be safe,” she said.

He waved back at her.

" _So this is your girlfriend's home_?"

Wesley startled at the sound of the man's voice. 

"I hope you don't mind that I came," he said. The man looked out and up through the open door. "So this is where you live?"

Wesley climbed in beside him and the driver snapped the door shut. "No. Well, near here, I guess." He could still see Necha, framed in her bedroom window. "And I don't have a girlfriend."

"Boyfriend, then?"

He shook his head. "Why?  Are you jealous?"

"Perhaps a bit."

Wesley leaned in against his side, putting his head on the man's shoulder. The man idly curled a hand through Wesley's hair. And the silence that fell over them was wonderfully comfortable.

Another crosstown commute. Another high rise. Another all but hidden entrance.

"This is not a hotel," Wesley said, as they crossed the dim and empty lobby.

"No," the man said. "It's a property I'm renovating."

Plastic sheeting hung from the ceiling in places. There were pallets of sheet rock and tile and power tools scattered all around. They took a rickety freight elevator up to one of the top floors.

"This is the only condo we have fished," he said, flipping on the lights. "It's mostly for show, but I think it's alright."

Wesley scoffed. He dropped his backpack and set to wandering through the large open rooms. The place was beautiful, all cream white and dark woods in the living room , a full dining area and kitchen, chrome and frosted glass. Floor to ceiling windows looked out onto the Hudson.

"Do you like it?" the man asked.

"Like it?" Wesley resisted the urge to press himself against the window, to look down. "It's  amazing. The light during the day must be... I mean this is the sort of place I've always...”

The man put a hand on the glass, boxing Wesley in. "I'm glad to know it meets your standards." And he bent down, pressing his lips to Wesley's hair.

It was a very brief touch, demure and faint, and Wesley still sighed softly.

The man got an arm around Wesley's waist and hoisted him easily, up and over his shoulder. Wesley yelped and laughed and the man hauled him down a hallway and into a bedroom.

Some people, Wesley thought, were just good at sex.

The bed was perfectly made with dark blue bedding. He tossed Wesley down on them and set to roughing him out of his clothes. There was scuffle for who got to be on top. Wesley made a coy retreat up the bed and was hauled back, laughing, when the man curled his hands around his ankles.

He could have hurt Wesley, but he didn’t, just lowered his head, kissing the flat of Wesley’s belly, tongue just dipping into his navel. Wesley made a grab for his wrists, rolled them over, pressed the man down, straddling his chest, both hands spread wide across the man’s shoulder. He could have just pinned Wesley’s down but there was something calculated in his strength, something tender and-- The man gripped his thighs with both hands, took him in his mouth, and Wesley arched and shuddered.

This was his sixth, maybe seventh meeting with the man and they’d never done this before, not like this. Wesley’s heart was beating fast. His hips hitched and stuttered. His nails scratched over the man’s short hair. “I think you’re letting me win.”

He groaned when the man pulled away.

“Why would I do that?”

Wesley bent down to kiss him. "I don't think you want to fuck me this time."

The man reached up, touched the red mark on Wesley's chest. "I wasn't sure... You always know just what I need, don’t you?"

"Well, that is my job," Wesley said, lightly.

But he could see it in the man soft fond expression; it was shocking and important somehow that Wesley would care for him-- would take care of him.

He thought "top", as a verb, was a stupid term. Clients almost never asked Wesley for that-- for this. He was small, and young and those were the only parts of him that anyone ever wanted. He thought it was a shame, too. Because Wesley was good at it. He liked it and he was good at it. He liked the subversion. He didn’t feel small when the man turned his back on him, when he let Wesley hold him down with just a hand on his thick muscled shoulder.

Later, after, because there was no room service, they ordered Chinese and had it delivered. They ate it in the pristine living room. The tv didn’t  actually work. The man had to teach Wesley how to use chopsticks because there was no silverware in the lavish kitchen.

"I wanted to ask, would you do something for me? "

Wesley put his feet in the man’s lap. "I thought I already did?"

He smiled softly. "Do you remember those men you saw a few weeks ago?"

Wesley tried, and failed, to get a piece of sesame chicken into his mouth. "Yeah."

"Well those men are in my employ and I’ve been having some, well-- some issues with insubordination. I thought you might... I'd like to speak with them on their own terms and... "

Wesley laughed. He thought about his C in  Mandarin. "You want me to translate, for you?"

“In so many words, yes. I’m afraid things are being lost in translation. And being able to appeal to someone in their own language... The benefits are, in business terms--”

“ _In so many words,_  yeah, why not.”

Wesley had to put his clothes back on. The men came late in the night. There were maybe 25 of them. They all stood awkwardly in the kitchen and Wesley sat on the counter kicking his bare feet in the air. He only recognized a few of them from that night, in particular the man who had laughed at him; he had a cast on his arm, up past the elbow, and a face full of bruises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys. Your comments are really the best. I just get anxious and never know what to say. But please know that I appreciate your incredibly kind words.


	5. Maintaining This Distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He knew that his mother had loved him, but in the exasperated fearful manner of a young woman who was under prepared and unsure.
> 
> She'd only been about Wesley's age when she had him.

He knew that it was, perhaps, a little bit trite. But the best part of self employment really was that Wesley could set his own hours. And he'd decided that, aside from his regular, he wouldn’t take clients the week before, or the week of finals.

He could afford it now

Wesley guessed he had his man to thank for that.

Wesley wasn’t really sure when he’d started thinking of the man as _his_.

The Architecture and Design department was a dead zone. Wesley couldn’t get any bars. He put his phone in his pocket, took it out, put it back.  
It was funny, in a way.

Wesley was so good at being charming for his clients. But he had a harder time with other people, people who weren’t paying him.  
So now Wesley stood there twisting the strap of his backpack between his hands, staring at his shoes to avoid eye contact and inevitable conversation with literally anyone else that might be wandering the halls.

The door across from him had a silver name plate. And it was covered in postcards and magazine clippings, a small Vivian Mailer print, a New Yorker comic that Wesley wasn’t sure he understood. The door pulled open and he jumped to attention

Another student-- a girl Wesley recognized from a class the previous semester --emerged and just behind her there was Professor Colter .

Colter shook the girl’s hand and wished her good luck with her exams. When she was gone, he turned on Wesley. “James, right? I assume you’re also here to see me?”  
He knew Wesley’s name and something about that fact made his heart race. “I, yes, please, if you still have the time.”

Colter ushered him into his office. He was a sharp featured older man with waves of gray blonde hair and he was partial to slim dark suits. Half a dozen degrees and awards hung on the walls.

Wesley was there to ask for a letter of recommendation. He was applying to a summer internship. And an endorsement from someone like Colter would go a long way.  

There were also pictures of a family, a wife and two children, all similarly tall and blond and glamorous.  Wesley had taken four classes with him and hadn’t said more than ten words to the man in all that time.

He was the sort of professor that liked to be friends with his students and Wesley didn't trust that.

But now he didn't really have a choice.

Colter closed his office door and pointed him toward a chair. Wesley rifled the internship application out of his bag.

“I was-- I need a reference. For this thing. And I was hoping you might, I mean--”

Colter laughed a little. “I’ve already seen a few of these today, from other members of your cohort. You’ve got some stiff competition.”

Wesley swallowed hard.

Maybe it wasn't actually funny.

“You don’t think I can get in?”

“No, that’s not what I said.” Colter laid the application on the desk and pushed it away. “Can I ask, what is it that made you want to go into this line of work?”

“Well I...”

Colter leaned in. And Wesley pulled away.

It was complicated, getting to know people; every new interaction ran the risk of leaving him caught in a lie. People were defined by their jobs, they talked about their jobs. And Wesley couldn’t talk about his job. It was just easier this way, to keep people away.

“I, ah, I brought my transcript. As you can see, I have good grades and my portfolio--” He pulled the thick black binder from his backpack, laid it out on Colter’s desk, taking some ground, forcing some space between them.

Colter didn’t so much as glance at it. “That’s not what I asked,” he said.

It was easier not to let people really know him.

“I, I guess I grew up in a city with some of the best architecture in the world so--”

“You realize that that’s what every other candidate will be saying, right?”

Wesley stared at the man’s hands, his manicured nails drumming softly on the desk. He knew that he was being ridiculous, that there was no reason that it should come up here or now. But he'd become so accustom to maintaining this distance from others.

“It’s not that you’re not a good student, or that I don’t think you deserve this ” he said. “You get good grades in my classes, but I simply don’t know you that well. I’d hate to poorly represent you.”

Wesley nodded.

“So tell me a little more about you, you know, and I can--”

“Can I think about it?” Wesley said.

Wesley took his portfolio back, the application, and shoved it in his bag.

Colter gave him a look that he recognized as pity and Wesley left, hating himself.

_Who was he?_

_Could he think about about it?_

The elevator was too slow in coming. The air in the building felt too thick, he still didn’t have any bars. For some reason Wesley couldn’t help but think of his parents just then. And he took the stairs instead. He told himself it was just school. He only really thought of them when he was stressed or tired

Outside, in the open air, Wesley got a cell signal and he could breath again.

He had an email from the artist. She wanted to see him again. He started to write her back, tell her he wasn’t available. But a relief settled over him as he re-read her email. This, this he knew. This he could do. So he told her that he was on his way.

Wesley's memories of his parents were in pieces. He'd been very young when it happened. So any hard feelings he had about it had mostly faded to apathy. It was hard to be sad about someone's death when you didn't really know them. And he knew that was wrong. He knew it was the sort of thing he wasn’t supposed to admit.

Wesley didn’t have the patience for the train just then. He needed the room to breath. So he turned east and walked.

What little Wesley did know had been told to him.

His father had been a cab driver. 

His mother had been, well, his mother.

They'd lived in small corner apartment in midtown with cold floors and peeling plaster and plumbing that was always going bad.

Wesley did remember the apartment. From one window he'd been able to see Stark Tower, from another, the Empire State Building.

By the time Wesley was knocking on the artist's door his head was clearer. He heard rustling from inside, but there was no answer. He knocked again.

The artist pulled the door open wide. "Sorry, hi," she said. “I didn’t know that you’d just come right over and--" She was flushed and smiling. “I needed to pick the place up a bit.”

“Nothing to be sorry about." He moved in to kiss her and she shied away, closing the door behind him. The place wasn't any less chaotic than the last time he'd seen it.

"Um actually, that's not why I asked you to come."

Wesley had one photo of his parents, from there wedding, his father tall and rakish and his mother with her dark hair and heart shaped face.

His grandmother was always telling him that he looked like her.

He remembered his father not being around much.

And he knew that his mother had loved him, but in the exasperated fearful manner of a young woman under prepared and unsure.

She'd only been about Wesley's age when she had him. 

Wesley looked to the door. He didn’t like being surprised. He wondered what he’d have to do, to make a quick exit if he needed. Could he dodge her or--

"I... look, just hear me out?" she asked. "I can still pay you the same hourly rate? And it's nothing weird, I promise."

"I..." Wesley took a breath. "Ok, yeah."

"Great!" She pulled a notebook off one of the many stacks of clutter in the front room and began rifling the pages. "Basically, I've been thinking about you since-- yeah, anyway. But you have an interesting face and I want to paint you."

She pressed the the sketchbook into his hands.

His mother would always tell him the same story, about how his great grandfather came over from Ukraine, helped to engineer the steel i-beams that they used to build all those skyscrapers.

On the open page there were sketches of him, from the chest up, from different angles, sprawled across her bed, carefully rendered, all apparently from memory.

"What would I have to do, just sit there?"

The painter shrugged. "Um, yes and no. I'll give you some directions. And I work from reference photos, mostly. So you wouldn't have to sit for me the whole time."

And Wesley remembered sitting in front of the windows, usually with a spiral bound notebook and box of crayons. He remembered drawing the sky line over and over, slow and meticulous to get the angles of the buildings just right.

He wanted to run his fingers over the page, but was afraid to smudge the graphite. "Do I really look this sad?" Wesley asked.

"I think you're more coy than sad," she said.

"Alright," he said."Yeah, ok."

"Great, amazing," she said. "So if you'll take off your clothes and sit over in that chair, I'll--"

Wesley laughed,"Of course." Of course she wanted him to take his clothes off.

But he did as she asked. And he sat in the chair and let the artist arrange him.

"Cross your ankles. Lean in. Bring your chin down a little."

She would snap a few photos with her phone, from different angles, and then change his position.

"When I was in art school," she said, "I’d have to ask someone to sit for me for hours. But now I've got this thing. And I just blow up the photos, work from there."

She had him pull both feet up on the chair. He was suddenly cold and wrapped his arms around his knees. He wasn't sure what to be doing with his face. And he was naked in front of people every day, but now, for the first time, he felt self conscious about it.

"Technology is amazing, isn't it?"

It sounded like something his grandmother might say. He brought his hands up to hide his laughter. The camera shutter clicked.

Wesley didn’t know if that story about his grandfather was true. And he didn't remember all of it, but he knew that one day his parents took him to his grandmother's so that they could go out, just the two of them. And the way it happened, it was almost banal, Wesley thought. There were countless muggings in New York City every day.

So his parents never came back.

He never left his grandmother's.

He never saw the small cold apartment again.

The artist went quiet for a moment, swiping through the photos she’d taken.

"You brat, I think that's it.”

She sat down on the arm of the chair, close enough that Wesley could smell her hair, and turned her phone around to show him.

It was kind of hard to look at, his parted lips and knobby knees. His head thrown back, pale shoulders and wide eyes and long fingers and the shadowy place between his thighs. It was beautiful and ugly in a way. Wesley wasn't sure if he looked happy or ready to cry.

"Well, we still have twenty minutes," Wesley said.

Her voice went low. "I should really be working."

He shrugged, "It's your money."

"Fuck." She sighed and kissed him.

Wesley pulled her onto his lap, got his fingers inside her paint covered cut off shorts.

"Do I get to see it, the painting, when it's finished?"

"Of course."

He wasn't expecting it when she pressed her thumb against his bottom lip, slipping into his mouth, firm along his tongue. He sucked and she watched him closely. She was going to draw this too, he thought. And he thought about his phone, still in his jeans pocket, discarded on the other side of the room. He wondered what she would think of his photo collection. Or even his portfolio, which Professor Colter hadn’t bothered to open.

After, she paid him and disappeared into the bathroom to clean up. She said she would call him when the painting was done. Wesley took a photo of her sketch book, of himself in her sketch book. Then, after a second thought, he tore the page out, stuck it in his pocket and left.

He took the train home. He needed to study. And he had an appointment with the man-- his man -- that evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically Wesley is Batman and a Disney princess rolled into one.
> 
> So anyway... sorry for taking a million years to update. I'm kind of in the middle of moving across the country for graduate school. But I hope you folx enjoy this chapter and I promise to post another one soon!


	6. American Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The man gave him a rare and soft smile. “Can you stay? We can go out and--”
> 
> “I have a, um, previous engagement. Sorry.”
> 
> “I can pay you more than them,” the man said.
> 
> And Wesley laughed. “No it’s--” He shouldn’t have been telling him this-- any of this. “It’s my birthday. I’m going out with a friend.”

Wesley was afraid of getting older.

He knew that most of his business was banked on looking the way he did, looking as young as he did. He knew that was disgusting in a way. And he knew that ideally he would not being doing this much longer. But if he had to, would he still be able to pay for the electric bill and text books and his grandmother's prescriptions?

He didn’t know.

And that scared him more than anything.

The man called him for a last minute appointment, which was strange.

He gave Wesley an address in midtown and just getting there on the bus seemed to be a great hassle, especially after he’d become accustomed to being chauffeured places. He had to use the GPS on his phone and it lead him to an old laundromat. He thought he was lost but then the man emerged from a side door of the building. He took Wesley inside, up a flight of stairs into a cramped office with creaking bookshelves and an old steel desk.

Wesley knew better than to ask questions.

The desk was oddly immaculate, no papers, no personal objects. Just a few pens, a lamp with a dusty shade. He got on his knees for the man, right there on the dingy carpet.

After, Wesley sat there awhile, his head on the man's thigh. "You've never wanted just a quickie before. Hard day?"

The man curled his fingers through Wesley's hair. "No, quite the opposite. I was feeling celebratory."

Wesley turned into his touch, pressed a kiss to his broad palm. He knew better than to ask what it was they were celebrating. "I'm glad I could be of service."

"And what about you?"

Wesley pushed himself to his feet. "What about me?"

He still struggled with this part. The man was so genuinely interested and Wesley wasn't sure how to talk about himself.

"Your classes will end soon, yes?" the man prompted.

“Um, yeah.” Wesley slumped against the edge of the desk, wiped the corners of his mouth.  “I already finished, actually.”

It was different somehow, being with him in the light of day.

“You did well, I assume?”

“Yeah, accept for this stupid Mandarin language course.”

Wesley hadn’t gotten that internship and he was still feeling a little sore about it.

“You should have told me. I could have helped you study.”

“Teacher student role-play would cost you extra,” Wesley said. He was only half joking.

The man blanched at that. “I only mean that I speak mandarin.”

Wesley’s eyes wandered to the cramped bookshelves.

“Anyone going into international business should.”

There was something wrong with the room; it didn’t match the man's suits or his restaurant choices or high rise model condo.

But some how Wesley still knew. This belonged to the man. Those other places had been temporary. But this was his. This was grounded and permanent. And each book on the shelves had a cracked spine or a scuffed cover. Some had obviously been read more than others. Suddenly the the bus and the faded carpet seemed less of an inconvenience.

“So this is where you do international business?”

“You don’t approve?”

Wesley bent down to kiss him. “You don’t need my approval. And I like it, this room. I see you in it.”

The man gave him a rare and soft smile. “Can you stay? We can go out and--”

“I have a, um, previous engagement. Sorry.”

“I can pay you more than them,” the man said.

And Wesley laughed. “No it’s--” He shouldn’t have been telling him this-- any of this. “It’s my birthday. I’m going out with a friend.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

Wesley reached down for his backpack and the man stopped him. “Not just yet.” He popped the button on Wesley's jeans, pressed his fingers down along the seam of the zipper. “Can I-- I want to see you.”

Wesley sat back down on the desk, undid his jeans the rest of the way. And it was embarrassing, but he was grateful. Wesley licked his palm. He was so hard and the first pull on his own cock was such a relief. He spread his knees wide.

“Like this?”

The man sat back in his chair. “Like you would if you were alone?”

“I...” Wesley's cheeks went hot. “Yeah.”

He didn't understand the man sometimes, the things he did and the things he asked of him. Wesley took off his shirt, pulled his feet up on the desk, got his jeans down off his hips before he could over think it. The desk creaked under his weight and he stretched out, head and shoulders pressed to the smooth surface, one knee cocked for a little leverage, so he could fuck into his own hand. Because this was how he did it, when he was alone, in his bed, getting off just for himself. That didn't happen much anymore.

The man made a soft amused sort of noise.

Wesley watched a pen roll away and onto the floor. It only occurred to him then that he was going to make a mess of this man’s desk. That thought made his breath catch. The metal surface was cold and dragged against his nipples with every roll of his hips. Wesley’s jeans cut hard against the backs of his spread thighs.

Wesley closed his eyes. And the man’s knuckles brushed along his cheek. “No, open up,” he said, gentle but scolding.

Wesley shook his head. He couldn’t. He was close and he tried to turn his face away but the man held him there. It didn’t hurt but it threatened too.

“Look at me.”

Wesley did. And he came with a shout.

The desk was a mess-- so was Wesley for that matter --and after a few breaths he climbed down off it with shaky legs. He started to say that he was sorry but the man shushed him.  He paid Wesley, pointed him toward a bathroom where he could clean up, and sent him on his way.

Outside the laundromat Wesley took a picture of himself, high angled and making a stupid face. He captioned it “happy hash-tag 20 to me bitches”, put it on instagram and went home.

His grandmother made an enormous dinner, almost as big as the ones she did for Christmas or Easter. When he saw how much food there was he called Necha to come over and help them eat it.

The meal ended it with an enormous and elaborately decorated cake. He blew out the candles and she produced a stack of packages from her bedroom.

“Babtsya, you shouldn’t have!”

“Don’t boss me. It’s your birthday. People get presents on their birthday.”

Wesley never cried. Almost never. But then he pushed his chair away from the table and stood up to wrap his arms around her soft round frame, pressing his face into her gray white curls.

“Silly boy, you haven’t even opened them yet.”

Wesley sniffed and laughed. “Alright, alright.”

When he pulled away he found Necha snapping pictures of them with her phone. “You’re really the cutest,” she said.

Inside one box there were button down shirts: stiff collars and soft fine fabric and mother of pearl buttons. In another there were slacks and a stiff new pair of jeans. Everything still had the Macy’s tags on it. He had no idea how she’d been able to afford any of this. And in the last box there was a jacket, slim and charcoal gray, three buttons with a slim sharp collar.

“You’ll graduate soon and need something to interview for jobs,” she said. “The jacket isn’t new, but I still hope you like it.”

Wesley laughed. “We call it ‘vintage’ now babtsya.” And he kissed her on the cheek. “It’s perfect. I love it.”

They ate cake and after he and Necha did the dishes.

“She must have saved for months,” Wesley said, quiet and guilty.

Necha squeezed his shoulder. “She loves you. Just accept it and be happy. You’ve got nothing to feel bad about.”

They finished and got dressed to go out. Necha wiggled her way into a tiny red dress. Wesley had to help her with the zipper up the back.

“So where exactly are we going?”

“It wouldn’t be a ‘birthday surprise’ if I told you, would it?”

Wesley pulled on one of the new shirts-- light blue denim --with the new dark wash jeans.

“You look hot,” Necha said, still touching up her eyeliner. “I'm sure it’s not what your grandmother was going for. But definitely hot.”

A moment later they heard the sound of a car horn out on the street. Laura was their designated driver for the evening. He kissed his grandmother goodnight and she told him to be safe.

He told her not to wait up.

They piled into Laura’s truck and Wesley didn’t look when the girls kissed.

The surprise turned out to be a club-karaoke bar in Brooklyn.

"You're the worst," he shouted at Necha over the music.

"Shut up, you love it. And you love me."

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

It was packed with attractive people. The drinks were free because apparently Necha new the bartender. The music was good. It only took Wesley four and a half whiskey-sours to be talked into doing “American Boy” with Necha. She was a better Kanye than Kanye any day. She got handsy with him on stage and the crowd cheered. After, Necha and Laura went off somewhere.

He went back to their table by himself and loneliness was just starting to creep in when a boy with a crooked snap-back and a tight shirt walked up to him.

“You and your friend looked cute up there,” he said

Another group had taken the stage, NYU bros. And they were ironically botching a Britney Spears song.

Wesley gave the boy a cruel look up and down. “I’m not giving you her number.”

“I don’t want her number,” he said. “I want you to dance with me.”

“Later. If you’re good.” Wesley downed the rest of his drink and took the boys hand, dragging him to the bathroom. A moment later they slammed into a stall.

The boy kissed him and said, “You’re legal, right?”

“Shut up.”

Wesley shoved him to his knees. 

He was good.

He even offered Wesley a bump of coke after.

And it was his birthday. So why not? 

Everything after that was fuzzy.

They drank more. He danced, with the boy and with Necha and a few others. Wesley told the boy he should call him but never gave him his number. And he wasn’t sure how late they stayed out. But he thought maybe, when they were driving home, he could see the hint of a sunrise in the rear view mirror.

He wasn’t sure how he got there, but Wesley woke in his own bed, late the next morning, to someone leaning on the door buzzer.

It took him a minute to get his bearings. He was hung over. It was Sunday. The coke had been a bad idea. The alarm clock by his bed said it was almost 9:30. His grandmother would be at mass.

Wesley dragged himself out of bed and over to the intercom. “Stop, stop with the buzzer, for the love of god.”

“James, you need to get down here.”

He could recognize Necha’s voice, even through the static.

“Just a sec.”

He was still wearing last nights clothes, pulled on some shoes and rushed down to the landing. Necha was in her pajamas. There were two guys in work blues next to her and a large wooden crate sitting on the concrete.

“They tried to deliver this to my apartment,” she said. "My dad was home."

Wesley scrubbed at his eyes. “What the hell is all this.”

The guy shoved a clipboard at Wesley. “Sign.”

Not sure what else to do, Wesley scrawled out his name.

The man took back the clipboard and handed him a plain white envelope and a slim box wrapped in brown paper. “What apartment are you in?”

“312, but what is this?”

“It’s all in the envelope. We’ll show ourselves in.”

The two men lifted the large crate and hauled it inside.

“You’re so fucking lucky I opened the door and not my dad,” Necha hissed. “Do you know what could have happened? I could have had to explain everything. Do you know what that would mean? For both of us?”

Wesley tore open the envelope. “I do, I know. I’m sorry. I’m gonna figure this out.”

“Yes, please. Please figure out why your’ weird millionaire client has my address.”

“It’s just because he picked me up there. I’m sure he doesn’t know--”

Necha held up her hands to stop him. “I don’t care. This was too close. I have to go.”

She turned to leave.

“Necha please, I can--”

But she was already gone.

In the envelop there was a card.

_I forgot to wish you a happy birthday._

_\-- WF_

Wesley rushed upstairs. He found the men hauling his old writing desk out of his room.

“We’ve assembled it. everything should be good to go,” one of them said.

It was the desk Wesley had had since he was a kid. It had been his mother’s desk when she had lived in that room. It was scuffed and pale white with blue flowers painted in the corner. His mother’s name was messily scratched into the bottom of the top drawer.

“Assembled what? You can’t just take that.”

“Well there won’t be room for both of them.”

“Both of what?”

The men didn’t answer and Wesley turned the corner into his room.

 _It_ was a drafting desk. A Fritz and Goeldel drafting desk. Wesley checked the stamp on the cast iron base just to be sure. The desktop was original. There was even a low back leather chair that went with it. The contents of his old desk drawers had been neatly stacked on his bed. Wesley collapsed into the chair.

He fished his phone out of his pocket. The battery was almost dead. He dialed.

The man answered on the second ring.

“Good morning, I take it you've--”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“You have received my gift, then?” he said. “I wasn’t sure of the address, so I was concerned that it might--”

“No shit,” Wesley snapped. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

The line was silent for a beat.

“I have a life, a life with people who don’t know that I fuck you for money. Do you know what it means for me, to have a $34,000 desk just show up at my grandmother’s apartment in fucking Queens.”

“So you live with your grandmother? I see.”

“That is not the point!” Wesley wasn’t sure when he’d started shouting. “The point is, how the fuck am I supposed to explain this? You put me at risk, and my friend. You have no idea--”

“Well,” the man said coolly, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

The line went dead.

Wesley tore open the brown paper covered package. He'd almost forgotten about it. There was a clean white box underneath and a new Mac Book inside. Wesley thew himself on the bed and screamed into his pillows. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is what a Fritz and Goeldel drafting desk [looks like.](https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/tables/industrial-work-tables/original-fritz-goeldel-mechanical-table-all-frills/id-f_655225/)
> 
> In my head this is set in the late 2000's. "American Boy" came out in 2008? 2009? idk, but it was an instant fav for me the first time I heard it. Estelle is a queen. [And Kanye doesn't even deserve to stand near her. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic5vxw3eijY)
> 
> Anyway, this was a long one. I wrote it, like, this morning on my phone. So if there are any egregious typos please let me know.


	7. Gross Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wesley had to wear a bright yellow polo shirt with the camp logo on it in big loopy letters; “BUGS: The Brooklyn Urban Gardening School.”

He worried sometimes, about what sex work would mean for his future.

Most of the time he could convince himself that it wouldn’t matter. He was discreet. He’d been cautious. No one would ever know.

Necha wouldn’t answer his texts.

Wesley told his grandmother that he’d found the new desk in a dumpster. He had pried out the drawer with his mother’s name in it and hid it beneath his bed.

“How was your day?” His grandmother asked, as he came through the door.

It was hard to worry about the future when just getting through the next moment, the next conversation, the next lie, felt so daunting.

She was setting the table for dinner and he collapsed into the nearest chair.

“Um, ok. Weird. I’m tired.”

He’d gotten a job, mostly for show. Gaps in a resume didn’t look good. His grandmother would never let him laze around the whole summer.

He pulled off his name badge. It read “Counselor James”. He tossed it down on the table.

“I don’t think kids like me. It feels weird to be bossing them around all day.”

The summer camp had been going for only a couple weeks. Wesley had to wear a bright yellow polo shirt with the camp logo on it in big loopy letters; “BUGS: The Brooklyn Urban Gardening School.”

“I thought you were supposed to be teaching them, about building and growing things?”

Wesley nodded. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know.”

He did know that it would look great on a Linkedin profile; working with inner city kids, promoting healthy living, urban philanthropy, activism combined with design, ect. ect.

But most of the kids he worked with were only there because their parents couldn’t watch them. They cared about eliminating food deserts and growing pesticide free organic tomatoes in hanging planters about as much as he did. Most of Wesley’s job was just making sure they didn’t kill themselves with any of the power tools or get into fights.

“You got sunburned.” His grandmother sat a plate down in front of him, ran a finger along the darkened bridge of his nose. “You need a hat.”

Wesley shook his head. “I look stupid in hats. They make my hair flat.”

The next morning he left early for the bus. The sun was barely up but it was already sweltering. He stepped out onto the streetand saw her, Necha, coming up the block, wearing sweats and big sunglasses, lugging a large bag of what he assumed were last nights costumes from the club.

“Necha!”

She stopped half way up the stairs to her her own building, gave Wesley a hard look over the top of her sunglasses and reached into her bag for her keys.

“Necha, please--” Wesley sprinted to catch up with her, before she could disappear inside.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Talk to me. I can’t stand you not talking to me.”

“I’m serious,” she hissed.

“So am I. Please?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you want?”

“Aren’t you dying in that?” Wesley asked, eyeing her sweatshirt.

“Yes,” she said. “I die a little every time some guy on the train tells me that he wants to lick my toes. What do you want?”

Wesley knew that she worried too. More than he did.

Another long silent beat passed between them.

If people found out about him, what he did, Wesley was fairly sure he’d survive it. It would be shameful. But it wouldn’t ruin him.

Necha, she could go to the best med school in the country. She could become the best surgeon there ever was. And if people ever found out--

She’d never live it down.

None of it would matter

Necha took off her sunglasses. “Well?”

He’d nearly been responsible for that, all of that.

“I had no idea that he would send me all that stuff," Wesley blurted. "And I’m so sorry that you got dragged into it. It won’t happen again. And I won’t ask you to cover for me more than you already do. It’s not fair. And fuck gross men who speak to you on the train. I'm sorry. I’m so sorry."

She conceded with a sigh. And Wesley lost out to the urge. He threw his arms around her. "Good I missed you."

She pressed a kiss against the shell of his ear. “Babe, you can’t-- I don’t think you should see that guy anymore.”

“He’ would never-- I think it was well intentioned. He’s not that sort of person--”

“He would buy a human being,” Necha said. “He is that sort of person.”

Wesley groaned. “I know, you’re right.”

“Of course I am.” When Necha pulled away her eyes were glassy and wet. She tugged at the collar of his polo shirt. “This is a terrible color on you.”

“I know,” he said. “And I’m gonna be late for work.”

Necha smirked down at him. “Yeah, I heard you had a new gig. Don’t you hate kids?”

“Yes. And I’ll call to tell you all about it on my break,” he said.

Wesley hugged her again, a little too long. He missed his bus and was late, but it was fine because so was everyone else.

The camp was run out of dirt patch behind an episcopal church. He was on a team with two other counselors, Jack and Carl. They were responsible for about ten kids. And they were supposed to teach pre planned lessons about the pollination process and the delicate balance of an ecosystem. They were supposed to keep their section of the garden alive.

But Jack and Carl left most of that to Wesley and spent their days, instead, texting and smoking weed in the equipment shed.

There were maybe a dozen neat little planter boxes in clean rows. Other groups were were already growing flowers and large leafy bunches of vegetables. Wesley’s group had produced nothing but  weeds. It was a nice day though, and Wesley was in a good mood. So he pulled on some gloves and some how managed to talk some of the kids into helping.

Well, it was only one kid at first. The others dispersed to wander around and pretend to look busy. But one girl hunkered down with him in the dirt, a lanky 9 year old, Shanell who had a large halo of dark black curls all about her face and around a million facts to share with him about both comic books and insects and the importance of organic vegetables, “...because you never knew what night be in the other ones.”

"Did you know that ladybugs are a natural pesticide? They eat spider mites that can eat the plants. Usually I like spiders thought."

Her excitement was awkward but endearing. She talked fast but couldn’t manage to land on a single subject and wouldn't look him in the eye.

"No, I did not know that."

It took them awhile to clear out the planters. She showed him the right way to pull the weeds out by the roots, or they would grow back, she explained, patiently, as though he were very very stupid. Wesley heard a yelp and looked up to see two of the boys pulling clumps of thistle and throwing them at one another.

"My favorite superhero is Black Widow. And the black widow is a type of spider. A really poisonous spider. So poisonous one bite could kill you, did you know that?"

"Actually, yes I did."

It was the most Wesley had heard the girl say all summer. He hadn’t paid much attention to her until now because she didn’t need it. She’d seemed always to sort of be hanging around at the back of things. Most days she ate her bag lunch by herself. And Wesley had never had to yell at her for play sword fighting with shovels or chasing someone with garden shears like all the other kids.

"Do any of the other kids like super heros?" he asked.

She paused, frowning down at a tangled of earth worms in the freshly tilled dirt. "Jack said that Black Widow dresses like a slut and she doesn't  deserve to have her own movie. "

"Jack the counselor? Jesus.”

She nodded slowly. And Wesley looked out across the yard to see the two of them sniggering at something on someone’s iPhone.

"Hey." Wesley grabbed her chin so he could look her in the face. "There is nothing wrong with being a slut. Black Widow can wear whatever she wants. She can be with as many or as few guys-- people --as she wants. And if she had her own movie I would go see it twice. So, what do you think we should plant first?"

She blinked at him. And her little face lit up. "Root vegetables!" she said. Shanelle ran off to get new seed packets. Wesley dusted himself off and marched over to Jack.

"We need to talk."

Jack opened his mouth to protest and Wesley snatched the phone out of his hands. "Now."

The boy followed him, and his hostage phone, around the side of the church. Wesley sucker punched him. He'd never hit anyone before in his whole life. And it surprised him how much it hurt. The phone crunched in his fist and Jack dropped to the dirt.

“The fuck was that for?" he cried.

"Don't call people sluts."

Jack sneered up at him with a bloody mouth. "You idiot, I'm so telling the supervisor."

"Go ahead. Tell them that you're a sexist piece of shit who harasses little girls."

Carl popped around the corner, a dumb confused look on his face.

"Clean your friend up," Wesley said. "Then maybe you should think about doing your fucking job."

He walked away, leaving them both dumbfounded.

After work, he met with clients. First, a businessman with a large BMW in the underground parking garage of an office building. It was a special request. But Wesley didn't understand sex in cars. He kept knocking his head on the door handle and thinking, this is not fun. Who would like this? Who owns a car in New York City?

Wesley had to settle for a cramped blurry photo of himself in a security mirror on the way out.

After that he was a birthday present from a Tribeca househusband to his lawyer partner. They were a little pretentious-- had watched too much porn, obviously --but not bad. There expectations were high and it left him a little sore.

But they were sweet to him after, lots of kissing and petting.

Their shower had three overhead jets and about a dozen settings. He tried all of them and snapped a picture of himself in the full length mirror.

Wesley was headed for the subway when his phone rang. He stared at the caller ID for a long moment and thought about what Necha had said. He was pretty sure he shouldn't answer. But he did anyway.

'Sir?" The line was quiet. "I... I don't think I can keep you on as a client--"

"I'd like to see you," the man said. "Just to talk."

Wesley knew he should tell the man ‘No’.

But he couldn't.

"Can it wait till tomorrow? I have to work early," he said.

The next day he and the kids finished clearing and panting their garden. In the afternoon they had a guest speaker come to talk about sustainable urban farming. She'd brought chickens and pigs and a goat and the kids were well behaved. Mostly they were ecstatic to pet the animals. He took a picture of Shanelle hugging a chicken and thought maybe he didn’t completely hate children.

Jack and Carl gave Wesley a wide berth.

Atl the end of the day a black towncar came to collect him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> James Wesley, junior feminist ally.  
> This is silly and indulgent and I don't give a shout.


	8. Nice Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For all his expensive taste and love of new things, Wesley had a special affection reserved for places like this. It was hard not to be taken by an old building.

Wesley liked nice things. But it was complicated.

The driver made good time across the Manhattan Bridge. He changed his shirt in the back seat.

When Wesley was growing up they were never poor, exactly. But Just barely making it wasn’t the same and making it. He remembers that things were thin most of the time. His grandmother had been retired and unprepared for the task of raising another child. They had always lived month to month. And Wesley thought it was a particularly American sentiment, to deny being poor no matter what the actual circumstance.

The driver watched him closely in the rear-view mirror. There was a small bar, tiny bottles of liquor, and a few magazines; the arts section of The New York Times, Italian Vogue, Bon Appetit.

Wesley thumbed through the sleek pages; homes he couldn’t afford, clothing that probably wouldn’t fit him anyway, places he’d never go, beautiful people he’d never know. There was a review of a new sushi restaurant. Next to that an advertisement for the new iPhone. He earmarked that page.

Wesley and his grandmother, they were never wanting. He made sure of that. They were more comfortable now then they were when he was growing up. But there was rarely money for extravagances. So this was as close as he ever got to them.

Wesley put the magazines in his backpack. He locked eyes with the driver in the rear-view mirror, as they turned onto Canal St, cocked an eyebrow, dared him to say something.

The building they drove him to was probably late 1920’s Wesley thought. The driver opened the door and pointed him toward a side entrance. But for a long moment all he could do was sit there, in the cool of the air conditioning, staring up at it; the art deco brick work, and enormous windows.

“Are you gonna go, or not?” the driver said. “He’s not accustomed to waiting on people.”

Wesley rolled his eyes and got out of the car.

Per the driver's instructions he went inside, took a lurching freight elevator to the third floor. The place had been gutted for renovation, recently it seemed. The sun was just beginning to set and the room was dim save for a few harsh work lamps. He found the man hunched over a makeshift desk, plywood stretched over two sawhorses, and overflowing with papers and blueprints.

“Another one of yours?” Wesley asked.

“Hello," he said. "And yes, it's a recent acquisition."

“I, um, I have this.” Wesley took the laptop from his bag, laid it on the desk.

“That’s not why I asked you here,” the man said.

“If you can send someone for the desk I’ll--”

For all his expensive taste and love of new things Wesley had a special affection reserved for places like this. It was hard not to be taken by an old building.

He wandered out into the open space. “This place is-- amazing.”

“It’s coming down tomorrow,” the man said. "We break ground on a new office building next month.”

The ceilings were impossibly high. “What? You can’t!”

It had maybe been a factory once. Or a warehouse, perhaps. The floors were original, wide plank hickory. The plaster walls were crumbling in places, exposing brick.  

The man gave him a bemused sort of look. “I can’t tear down my own building?”

“I didn’t mean.” Wesley’s shook his head. “Look, I’m sorry. For everything. I shouldn’t have said those things. You’ve been nothing but kind and generous and I--”

“But you were right,” the man said.

Wesley could already see it, how he’d lay the place out; a large open kitchen in the east corner, dark woods to match the floor and exposed beams in the ceiling, connected dining room with seating for at least twelve, living room under the windows, a study, bedroom, master bath.

“I thought you’d be angry.”

“I was-- initially. But it was true. You keep my secrets and I showed no regard for yours. It was careless."

The cut up windows were dirty and broken in places, but they let in beautiful dusty yellow light.

“I hated to think that I might have-- put you in danger,” he said. “And I was too proud to admit my own fault.”

Wesley could see all the way to the Hudson. The sun was setting. Maybe he’d put the bedroom near the windows instead.

“Come here?” Wesley held out a hand to him. “Come here to me?”

The man’s sharp footfalls echoed off of the brick. He took Wesley’s proffered hand, pressed a kiss to his knuckles.

“I don’t know if I deserve it, but I do hope that you’ll forgive me.”

He looked wounded and unsure. And Wesley could never have imagined a man such as him being unsure about anything. Not knowing what to say, Wesley kissed him instead. He let the man gather him up, fitting his hands around Wesley’s waist, kissing him breathless, nearly lifting him off his feet.

“It is-- a beautiful desk.”

The man chuckled softly. “I’m glad you like it.”

“You’re not really going to tear down this view, are you?” Wesley said, turning back to the window.

And the man smiled down on him fondly. “Of course, back to business. That’s why I brought you here.” He pulled away. “Unfortunately I’ll be traveling the remainder of the summer.”

“Going someplace exciting?” Wesley asked.

“Tokyo and Hong Kong. Maybe Moscow, on the way back.” He went to back to the desk, gathered up the laptop as well as a large manila envelope. “You won’t be seeing me for some time, but you should still be compensated for our scheduled appointments.” He pushed them both into Wesley’s hands. “That amount also includes back pay, for the last month.”

Wesley swallowed hard, tried to tally up a figure in his head. The envelope was thick, bulging against it’s contents. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“I was also hoping you might stay in touch while I’m away-- check in from time to time.”

Wesley squeezed the envelope in his hands. “I guess. But I-- I can’t take this

The man curled a large hand around the back of his neck, pressed a kiss into Wesley’s hair. “The driver is still downstairs. They’ll take you home," he said gently, and guided him back into the elevator.

Wesley wandered back out onto the street in a daze. He gave his address to the driver and he waved Wesley off-- “Yeah, I know.” --snapped the door closed behind him.

They pulled into traffic and Wesley tore into the envelope.

“Holy shit.”

It was packed with large bills and a new iPhone. Wesley slumped back in his seat.

“Holy shit.”

He thought maybe he caught the driver rolling his eyes. And he wasn’t brave enough to walk home with that much cash, so he had the driver drop him right in front of his building. He ran up all three flights of stairs, hugging his backpack against his chest. He skidded through the door to find his grandmother making dinner.

“You’re late!” she scolded.

“I know, I’m sorry.” Wesley laughed and hugged her. “Turn off the stove. Go get changed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re going out!” he announced. “So put on something nice, church nice. We’re celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?”

“I don’t know-- it’s Wednesday!”

Wesley hid most of the cash under his bed. He put on the jacket that his grandmother bought for his birthday. They took a cab and his grandmother kept calling him ridiculous. She'd never had sushi before. He had to teach her how to use the chopsticks.

The next day he went to work, planning to quit. But then he saw the kids weeding out their little vegetable patch and changed his mind.

A few days later his new iPhone chirped with a text message from the man.

 

_I’d like you to do something for me._

 

It was a Sunday and Wesley hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet. He checked the time. It would be almost two am in Tokyo. He wrote back.

 

_I’m at your service._

It took a long time for the man to reply. And when he finally did Wesley couldn't help but laugh.

 

_I’d like a picture of you._

 

Wesley thought about sending the man one from his collection. But instead he stripped off his shirt, mussed his hair and shoved his sweats down until they were just clinging precariously to the curve of his backside. It took him a few tries to get the shot just right; coy smile, arched back, high angle, over the shoulder so he could see Wesley’s ass.

 

A reply came almost immediately.

 

_What are you doing in bed so late in the day?_

Wesley took a breath, rolled onto his back and kicked off his sweats.

 

_What would you like me to do?”_

 


	9. Cash Up Front

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE SEE END NOTES FOR TRIGGER WARNING
> 
>    
> Necha laid her head on his shoulder. “Thank you for coming over," she said  
> Necha and Laura had broken up. Wesley resisted the urge to touch her hair, to kiss the top of her head, to put his arms around her too tightly. “Anytime,” he said.  
> The fireworks crackled and flashed; red, white, blue.  
> “Happy fourth of July,” she said.  
> “Happy fourth to you too.”

 

The sudden infusion of cash was fun at first.

Wesley couldn’t put it in a bank so it stayed in the envelope under his bed. He would count it sometimes just for kicks, lay it out in stacks across his bed. On more occasions than he was willing to admit to, Wesley held the larger bills to his nose, but didn’t know if they smelled like anything in particular. And then he would put the bills back in the envelope. And there they would stay.

He liked the idea of money. He liked knowing that he had it. But he wasn’t sure how to go about spending it.

Wesley didn’t hear from the artist for a while. She’d said that she would call. And Wesley knew that he wasn’t supposed to develop attachments to his clients, but he liked her anyway.  He wondered if it was because he’d taken the page from her sketch book. Or because his pictures hadn’t turned out so well. But then he got an email.

“Hey, do you want to go to an art showing in Soho tomorrow?” he asked Necha.

They were sprawled across her fire escape on beach towels with a pack of oreos, a tub of ice cream, and a mostly empty bottle of wine.   Kids down on the street were setting off firecrackers.

“An art opening? Since when do you like art? More importantly, since when can we afford Soho?”

“Hey!” Wesley sloshed his drink in her direction. “I am a man of the world. I like art.”

She snorted. “Who’s art opening?”

“You remember the painter I told you about? Cute, red hair.”

Necha hissed out a breath. “Wesley--” There was a warning in her tone.

He hadn’t told her that he was talking to the man again. And he hadn’t told her about this either.

“It’s not like that. I sort of modeled for a painting.”

“You didn’t!” Necha sat up so that she could scowl at him him properly.

“It’s showing at a gallery and she invited me.”

“You’re naked in it aren’t you?”

“Don’t be a prude,” he laughed. “It’s not pornography. It’s art.”

She smacked him on the arm. “You never said anything to me!”

There was a whistle and a hiss. The sky was suddenly full of fireworks.

“There’s an open bar.”

“You should have led with that,” Necha laid her head on his shoulder. “Thank you for coming over," she said

Necha and Laura had broken up. Wesley resisted the urge to touch her hair, to kiss the top of her head, to put his arms around her too tightly. “Anytime,” he said.

The fireworks crackled and flashed; red, white, blue.

“Happy fourth of July,” she said.

“Happy fourth to you too.”

The next day Wesley went to work with his hangover. It was the last day of camp and he got a little emotional about it. Their gardens were all harvested and broken down. The parents came to pick up their kids for the last time. Shanelle gave him a big hug goodbye and her mother shook Wesley’s hand.

“Shanelle’s talked about nothing but you all summer,” she told him. “I think she has a little bit of a crush. She’s excited to come back next summer. I hope you’ll still be here.”

“I do to,” Wesley said. And at least part of him meant it.

Wesley supposed he could have stopped working. But he didn’t want to get lazy.

After, he had to rush home; showered and changed into one of the shirts his grandmother had gotten him, his new jacket. Wesley thought he looked sharp and sent a picture of himself to the man who was, he thought, in Hong Kong now. He headed for the train and texted Necha. He had a client then he would meet her at the gallery.

She told him he was cray. Told him not to be late, leave her alone with a bunch of rich white people.

He didn’t want to get comfortable, didn’t want to become accustom to a certain kind of lifestyle and then be left floundering when it went away. Because surely it would go away.

Wesley promised her he wouldn’t be late.

This client was new. Their screen name was DutchGable, which Wesley had found vaguely funny. He figured they were probably a general contractor. Men in construction jobs-- especially ones with wives --loved him. Dutch Gable was older but had an ok body, based on the photos Wesley had seen, not that he really cared. Mostly it was convenient. The address they gave him was for an apartment in the east village, so it wouldn’t be a terrible commute.

Wesley managed to slip into the building with a woman who was carrying a large armload of groceries. They shared long looks in the elevator. He helped her carry the bags to her door. She flirted with him a little and he told her to have a nice evening before getting back in the lift. It took him the rest of the way up, to the very top floor. The apartment was at the end of the hall and when Wesley knocked there was no immediate answer.

That happened sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. He knocked again. Wesley could hear movement in the apartment.

“Sorry, just a sec," said a voice on the other side of the door. 

People would get cold feet and instead of properly canceling they'd just not show up. But then the door pulled open.

“Professor Colter?”

He was standing on the other side of the entry with a towel around his waist. “Sorry,” he said. “Just getting out of the shower.”

His hair was wet. And all Wesley could do was stand there.

"James, good to see you again," Colter said. 

Wesley saw bodies-- all sorts of bodies --all the time. But seeing a teacher this way, without his suit and tie, all that bare skin, not in a classroom. All the things he’d worked so hard to keep separate were colliding. Wesley’s stomach flipped. His heart was suddenly beating fast.

“I think I-- have the wrong address or--”.

“We both know that’s not true,” he said.

Wesley felt his cheeks go hot and Colter smiled.  He took Wesley by the arm, drawing him inside.

"Please, come in," he said, just like he was inviting Wesley into his office at school

There were pictures of his family on the table in the entry, the same ones that were in his office. The wife and two children, all  blond and glamorous. Wesley ran his fingers over the fine silver frame. 

“Don’t worry, they won’t be home for a few hours. The bedroom’s through here,” Colter said, turning away. “Whenever you're ready.”

Not sure what else to do, Wesley followed him. They passed more photos on the walls, a messy child’s bedroom. If he said no, if he didn’t go, Colter might tell the cops or the university. The bedroom was neat and bright.

Colter sat down on the edge of bed, knees spread wide. “Take off those clothes,” he said.

He didn’t know if wanted to, but if Wesley fucked him then Colter would be complicit. And what did it matter if he wanted to anyway? He did this all the time. This was just another Job. This was Wesley's job.

There was a vanity with a large mirror. Sleek glass bottles and shiny lacquered jewelry cases carefully arranged on the dark wooden surface. Wesley folded his shirt carefully and set it on the bed. 

“You look tense,” Colter said, with a little bit of a pout. “Come lay down with me?”  

Whether he wanted it or not, it seemed the safer of his two options. So Wesley laid down as Colter directed him-- his head toward the foot of the bed, on his stomach, he could see himself in the vanity mirror.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” Colter loomed over him, kissed the back of his neck and began kneading Wesley’s shoulders. “No need to be nervous. You didn’t show your face in any of your photos,” he said, “But I still knew it was you.”

Wesley didn’t know what to say.

Colter straddled his thighs, pressed his dick against Wesley’s ass. asked if it felt good, the way he was working his fingers down the line of his back. Wesley moaned because it was what he was supposed to do. He wondered if Colter even noticed, that he hadn’t said anything since coming through the door.

“You know, I’ve wanted to fuck you since the first time I saw you in my class.”

He kneed Wesley’s thighs apart. And he pushed in too fast. He wasn’t wearing a condom. It hurt and Wesley groaned for real. He tried to push himself up but Colter pinned him with a hand at the back of his neck.

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s it. Wanted to since the first time-- When you were in my office, wanted to bend you over the desk and-- ”

Wesley had forgotten to ask for his money. He always asked for cash up front.

After, Colter kissed him like it was completely normal. He went into the bathroom to clean up. And when Wesley looked at himself in the vanity mirror he expected to look more dramatic. But there was nothing. He just looked like himself. Not even terribly upset or sad. Just pale. His hair was a mess. He wished that Colter had given him a back eye or a split lip, something to show for the ache in the rest of his body.

Wesley found his cell phone and took a picture.

He had a text message of Necha. He was running late. Wesley's shirt had been knocked to the floor. It was wrinkled. He got dressed. He quietly opened one of the lacquered boxes on the vanity. It was full of rings and earrings a few necklaces with diamond pendants. He blindly grabbed up a handful and shoved it in his pocket.

“Where’s my money?” he called into the bathroom.

Colter’s response was garbled through the door.

Wesley made quick work of searching the bedside tables. He found Colter’s wallet, took all of the cash-- a couple grand by his count --and he walked out.

At the gallery Necha scolded him for being late. The painter-- her name was Sarah -- greeted him with a hug.

“So I know I only said one painting, but I got carried away,” she said, leading him through the gallery by his elbow. “Everyone seems to like them though. I already have a few bids, actually.”

She’d done three paintings of him, large scale portraits, hung side by side. There was a large crowd gathered around them.

“It’s called a triptych,” Necha told him.

His body looked abstract. He was laughing in one. Pensive in another. A whole array of colors he didn’t know were really in him. He thought that maybe in the third it looked like he was coming.  They were beautiful, so beautiful he couldn’t believe that he’d had anything to do with them.

“You really like them?” Sarah asked.

And he hugged her. “They’re amazing. You’re amazing.”

Wesley asked where the bar was. He drank too much that night. He pretended to listen to the things people said to him. The man sent him a text message but Wesley didn't check it. When someone asked if he was the handsome young man from the paintings he told them 'no'. It was just his job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning for sexual assault.


	10. Scope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This is where you live, isn’t it?” Wesley asked. Though it wasn't really a question.
> 
> The man gave him a fond look. “How can you tell?”
> 
> “I just can.”

Wesley had never checked into a hotel by himself before. It was in midtown, nothing fancy. The woman at the front desk asked what kind of room he wanted and he didn't know how to answer.

“Ah, it’s just me,” he said.

The woman sighed. “So a single then.”

He didn't know how long he'd be staying. He didn't have a credit card. He'd taken the jewelry to a 24hr pawn shop where a man behind a glass counter had told him that almost all of the stones in the rings and earrings were lab made. He'd given Wesley $175 for the whole lot and that was just enough for the first night. But Wesley still had the money the man had given him.

The woman looked more put out than shocked when he paid in cash, handed him his key card and asked, "Will you be needing any help with your luggage?"

"No thank you," he said. He didn’t have any

 Wesley had never had trouble with the cops. Guys-- men --didn’t usually get arrested for prostitution. It was the sort of thing that happened to women. Or people that worked on the street.  But it still scared him. He had heard stories; about people being arrested for “manifesting”. Fake online profiles created by the police.

The room wasn't much but it was clean; clean white walls, clean white tile in the bathroom, boring furniture, no real view, unless you considered the opposite side of 45th street a view. Wesley did up the dead bolt and the chain on the door, turned on every light and checked the closet before running water in the bathtub. He should have brought a change of clothes. All he had was the suite that his grandmother had bought him, which he hung carefully in the closet.

He’d heard that sometimes cops would have sex with a prostitute and then arrest them after.

The bath wasn't very big. He felt silly sitting there with his knees poking out of the water. But he stayed anyway, until the water went cold, and he'd scrubbed himself sufficiently pink with the tiny hotel soaps.

He took a picture of himself in the steamed over mirror. He vomited up all the wine from gallery. He plugged his phone in to charge. And he was so tired. But when he crawled between the stiff white cotton sheets sleep didn’t come.

When Colter was fucking him he'd put his hand on Wesley's cock, jerked him off roughly, like he'd though Wesley was into it, like he'd wanted to make him come or something. But Wesley couldn't, didn't even get hard. And eventually, thankfully, he'd stopped.

Wesley had heard that in some states they’d post the mug shots of prostitutes online. He'd been thinking about applying to graduate school. He'd heard that you couldn't get approved for student loans with a felony conviction.

The man had texted him a few more times. He said that Wesley looked handsome. He asked where Wesley was going all dressed up like that. He said that when he got back into town he wanted Wesley to dress up for him. They'd go shopping maybe. Go to dinner someplace. Maybe a show. He asked if Wesley liked the theater.

 _What’s your name?_ Wesley asked.

No reply came. So Wesley made a game of it. W.F. William Fletcher? Walter Fairplay? Warren Foley? He came up with fifty more and he touched himself, carefully, because his skin still felt raw. It was only so he could fall asleep. He got himself off quickly, without much satisfaction. He wondered if the cops would come for him and nodded off with his phone lying flat against his chest.

Necha called and left a voice message asking why he’d ghosted on her at the art gallery.

She said that Lauren had called her. She said that Lauren wanted to try and get back together and fix things between them.  She wanted to know what he thought. She asked Wesley to call her back.

He got a few calls from a 212 number that might have been Colter. But they didn’t leave any messages.

There was a string of calls from the number marked Home/Grandma. They came one after another for a while and then stopped. Wesley let them vibrate through his chest but he didn't answer

 He had heard about the things that happened to sex workers in prison.

Colter was not the first to do that sort of thing. Frankly, Wesley thought, it was sort of to be expected at this point; clients getting rough with him. And even then, Colter hadn’t been that rough. Wesley had done worse things. He had had worse things done to him. He didn’t understand why this was different somehow.

He’d certainly never robbed a client. He wondered if that was it? He wondered if Colter would tell the university, if he already had. And if he did, what would they do?

Wesley had never been so tired before.

Sometimes he felt hungry, but then the thought of food would turn his stomach.

He only got out of bed to stumble into the bathroom and vomit bile.

He kept a glass of water by the bed but even that was difficult to keep down.

Every rustle of movement in the hallways sounded like the police coming for him. He didn't leave the room for four days. When he wasn’t sleeping Wesley played his new game and watched the door, waiting for it to burst open, waiting for someone to come and tell him that everything he’d worked for was over. No career. No school. No money to pay the rent. No getting out of Queens. Because he’d fucked up this time.

The door opened on the fifth day, quietly, letting in sickly yellow light from the hallway. Wesley was asleep when it happened. The man had two assistants with him. He had one pay the maid who had opened the door while the other carefully and quickly swept the room, gun drawn.

“Quietly,” the man told him. “Don’t turn on the lights.”

The assistant nodded, silently. And the man went to the bed, drawing back the covers.

“Bring the car to the back,” the man said. “Gather his things. Pay out the bill. Make sure we aren’t seen.”

The assistants dispersed to their separate tasks. The man took off his jacket, bundled Wesley into it and lifted him easily from the bed.

When Wesley woke he was in a bedroom, a bedroom in an apartment. Wesley blinked up at the ceiling. He was too hot, covered with a nubby knit rose colored blanket. To his right there was an IV stand. He followed the line of the clear tubing to find it attached to his hand. None of the furniture in the room matched. The curtains on the windows were made of filmy old lace. The bed was brass. The dresser by the door was mahogany.  And the bedside table looked prefabricated, made of particle board, the surface crowded with books and a shabby old lamp.

To his left, in an old straight back chair, the man seemed to have dozed off, hands steepled on his lap, chin resting on his chest.

 “What the hell is this?” His own voice sounded horse and foreign Wesley panicked.

The man startled. “You’re awake?” he said.

Wesley’s head felt sluggish. He tried to pull up the tape on the IV but the man caught him by the wrist before he could manage it.

“You were severely dehydrated,” the he said, gently pressing his wrists back to the bed. “And anemic. You were given a slight sedative. Just—“

“Where am I?” Wesley demanded

The man sighed, relieved. Then again, more softly, he said. “You’re awake. I’m—so glad.”

He released Wesley’s wrists and sat back in his chair.

And Wesley might have asked then how it was that he had gotten there. Or how the man had found him. Or who had hooked him up to the IV. Or if his grandmother knew where he was. Or why he hadn't been arrested yet. But he didn’t. Because looking up at the man just then, Wesley realized that he’d made a mistake.

“This is where you live, isn’t it?” Wesley asked. Though it wasn't really a question.

The man gave him a fond look.“How can you tell?”

“I just can.”

He leaned forward, picked Wesley’s hand up off the blanket and enveloped it between his own. “Something happened to you?” he asked. “Another- client? I need you to answer me honestly.”

Wesley swallowed hard. “Yes”

The man whose name he didn’t know was not just a rich client, not just someone who bought and sold New York City real-estate, not just a shady business man, and certainly not just a drug dealer. His scope was so large that Wesley hadn’t even been able to really imagine it. But here he was, in this small bed in this small room with him.

“I’d like you to tell me their name,” the man said.

“What will you do to them?”

“Does it matter?” The man dropped his head, pressed a kiss to Wesley’s knuckles.

“No,” Wesley said. “I guess not.”

“My name,” the man said, “is Wilson Fisk. I will take care of everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grad school is hard.  
> Thank you, everyone, for you patience and eternally lovely comments.


	11. Wedding Soup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wesley shook his head. “You work with the best architects in the world and still do all of your accounting on paper?”
> 
> “That,” Fisk said, “sounds like something an assistant would handle.”

Wilson Fisk asked if he would like something to eat.

And Wesley’s first inclination was to call him ‘Mr. Fisk’. But he was quickly, gently, corrected.

“Please, Wilson is fine.”

And usually he would have immediately said yes— always yes to food –but instead he hesitated. Something about the events of the last week had caused his appetite to turn on him.

“I don’t know,” Wesley said. “I haven’t— I don’t know.”

Wilson Fisk frowned. “That’s not like you,” he said.

It was past midnight, according to a small clock on the dresser. Fisk left clothing there for him: fine silk pajama bottoms, a soft t-shirt. There was even a robe which seemed silly and old fashioned to Wesley, but it was very soft. He was left alone in the strange room to change and couldn’t help himself.

The top drawer of the dresser had a hand gun nestled in amongst rows of neatly rolled socks. He peeked quickly into the closet and found it full of the man’s dark suits. Wesley’s phone was on the bedside table. The books there were mostly history and philosophy, except for a single paperback mystery at the bottom of the stack. Something about this made Wesley smile. It was the first time in days.

A man that Wesley assumed was a doctor came into the room. He was sloppy looking; his jacket too large and his shirt untucked. He carried a large black leather case and asked Wesley if he could please roll up his sleeve, if he could take a blood sample.

“I get tested at a clinic,” Wesley said carefully. “Where it’s anonymous.”

The doctor snorted and laughed. “Trust me kid, this is as anonymous as it gets,” he said.

And the man- Fisk, Wilson Fisk –was suddenly looming in the doorway. He cleared his throat. “Consider your bedside manner,” he said, voice cool and full of venom.

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

Fisk disappeared once more and the doctor wouldn’t look Wesley in the eye after that. He explained, thoroughly and calmly that he would test Wesley for HIV as well as Hepatitis B and C. He listened to Wesley’s heart and lungs, took his temperature, asked if he was in any pain.

Wesley still felt nauseous and the doctor gave him a bottle of pills with instructions to take them with water before eating. He told Wesley to rest and he almost laughed at that. He didn’t feel good, necessarily. But Wesley thought that he’d rested enough, at least for a while. He reminded Wesley to get tested again in six weeks.

After the doctor had gone Wesley put on the soft robe and ventured out into the apartment. He found Wilson Fisk sitting at a battered formica topped table with a slew of papers in front of him.

“Can I call my grandmother?” Wesley asked.

The man looked up from his work with a curious expression. “Of course. You don’t have to ask.”

Wesley wasn’t sure how true that was. He checked the time on his phone.

“I could arrange a car,” said Fisk. “If you’re like to go home?”

“No, it’s— It’s late.”

Fisk nodded and went back to his work. The rest of the apartment was equally as outdated as the bedroom. Everything seemed to be peeling at the edges.

“So, um. Why do you live here?” Wesley asked.

All of the furniture as clean but worn and sagging. The little kitchenette was immaculately maintained, but still showed the wear of age. It reminded him of his own apartment.

“Why not live in one of your properties?”

The man frowned and was quiet for a long time. “Sentimentality, I suppose,” he said. “But we have business to discuss. Would you prefer to eat now or after?”

Wesley’s stomach lurched. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “I don’t think—I’m not really up for doing business right now.”

“No. No, of course. I didn’t mean—“ The man shook his head. “I have a-- different sort of proposition to discuss.”

Wesley dropped into the chair across from him. “Food now, I think.”

Wesley watched, a little bit amazed, as the man moved around the tiny kitchen. He cleared a portion of the table directly in front of Wesley, shuffling papers together and depositing them onto a chair. He got a single bowl from the cupboard and a spoon from the drawer. A slow cooker on the counter was quietly simmering and Fisk ladled out soup for him.

“I’m afraid it might not be up to your usual standard of dining,” he said, setting the bowl down in front of Wesley.

It was wedding soup; something about that name always made Wesley giggle. It seemed an odd choice of a meal for July, he thought. But it smelled incredible.

“I was told you might need something that was easy on your stomach,” said Fisk.

Wesley wondered, but was not brave enough to ask, if the man had made it himself.

He had always been one of those people that people got annoyed with. He could and would just eat and eat and it never seemed to stick to him. The soup was delicious, even better than it smelled and Wesley was half a dozen bites in before he realized that he hadn’t said thank you.

When he looked up the man was watching him with a bemused expression.

“It’s good?” he asked.

Wesley nodded. “I haven’t eaten since, I don’t know, —? What day is it?”

“Thursday,” the man said. “I thought as much.”

Six days, Wesley thought. Six days since he’d eaten real food. Six days since he’d been home. But he couldn’t think about that just then. He set himself, single mindedly, to spooning up food, putting in his mouth, chewing, swallowing. Fisk went back to his spread of papers; a lot of financial documents. There was a calculator among the stacks that he’d search for occasionally.

“You know,” Wesley said, gently. “There are, like, computer programs for that.”

The man cocked an eyebrow at him. “I thought we had strict policies about business and dinners?”

“Well.” Wesley looked down into his bowl. It was almost empty. “It’s not strictly dinner time. And I’m eating and you’re not, so.”

“I hate to break from decorum, but if you insist.” Fisk reached across the table, gathered up Wesley’s bowl, refilled it, and returned it to him.

“So…” Wesley dove right in to his second helping. “There is this thing, Quick Books,” he started, but Fisk held up a hand to stop him.

“I have something else I’d like to discuss.” He rifled the papers on the chair, produced a thin familiar looking black folio, and slid it across the table. “Do you remember this?” he asked.

It was Wesley’s portfolio. “How did you-?”

“I took it,” Fisk said, a little bit of embarrassment seeping into his voice. “I wasn’t sure that you’d noticed.”

Wesley had thought that he’d lost it, or left it with Colter during their meeting his office. He was suddenly nauseous again. Six days. 

“Your work,” the man said. “It’s promising.”  
Wesley tipped open the front cover, flipped through his first few sketches and designs. “It’s not— none of it matters now. It’s not real,” he said, and shoved the folio away.

“It could be,” Fisk said.

Wesley’s vision went slant and watery. “How?”

“You design buildings,” he said simply. “And I am looking to build them. I want to hire you.”

Wesley eyed the mass of paper. There were work orders. Receipts for building materials. Payroll forms. Wesley fished in the pockets of the robe for his phone.

“If I’m working for you then you definitely need to get Quick Books,” he said and started scrolling through his missed calls. Six days. “I need to— I’m going to call my grandmother.”

Wesley imagined her scolding him for being a bad house guest, for being so rude as to use his phone at the table. The phone rang and rang. And he wondered if she’d reported him missing. If she’d looked for him. God, if she’d cried. He could never handle it when she cried. He redialed and redialed and the phone rang and rang and she didn’t pick up. Suddenly it was hard to breath. His face was awash with tears. And he was lost, until very gently, Fisk took the phone from his trembling fingers and gathered him up in his arms.

“Do you want to go home?” he asked.

And Wesley wasn’t sure what would be worse. Staying, and leaving his grandmother to wonder where he was for even an hour more. Or going and having to explain himself, where he’d been and what had happened, because he wasn’t sure he could muster another lie.

“Why don’t we get you into bed,” Fisk said gently. “And I’ll take you home in the morning?”

“Will you come with me?” Wesley cried.

And the man kissed the top of his head. “Yes, of course.”

In the small bed, under the knitted blanket, Wesley clung to him. Fisk stroked his hair and shoulders and kissed his face and said, “When you work for me, you won’t have to do this anymore. Not even with me."

But Wesley hadn’t agreed to work for him yet.

In the morning Wesley was given a fresh change of clothes. His suit had been cleaned and hung in a garment bag. It was a long drive, rush hour on a Friday.

“You would start out as my assistant,” Fisk told him. “You would finish your degree. Of course I would cover tuition and any other cots you have. After graduation I’d have you work more closely with my current team of designers. I work with some of the best architects in the US, Japan and China. From there, you could do whatever you wished. Go wherever you want.”

“I haven’t said yes to any of this though.”

“I know,” Fisk said.

Wesley shook his head. “You work with the best architects and still do all of your accounting on paper?”

“That,” Fisk said, “sounds like something an assistant would handle.”

When they pulled up in front of Wesley’s apartment building the man got out of the car.

“What are you doing?” Wesley hissed.

“Whether or not you say yes,” Fisk told him, “That is what I am going to tell your grandmother, that I hired you suddenly, because I see enormous talent in you, and I couldn’t spare you, even for so much as a moment to make a phone call and that’s why you were gone.”

“ _You’re_ going to tell her?”

 “You did ask me to come with you,” he said.

Wesley shook his head. “She won’t believe it.”

Fisk held out a hand to help him from the car. “You don’t know this about me yet. But I have a way with people. I tend to get what I want.”

Wesley had a thousand questions. And there were innumerable things about this man that he didn’t know yet. And he’d only just learned his name but Wesley knew one thing with absolute certainty. Wilson Fisk was the type of man who always got what he wanted.

Wesley took his hand. “School starts in three weeks,” he said. “I’ll need books.”

“Oh and new cloths, I’m sure,” the man said, brushing his knuckles along Wesley’s cheek.

Wesley had never heard him make a joke before. He’d never touched him out in the open either.

“I— I have a class taught by the man who… The client. The one I told you about.”

“Not anymore,” Fisk said.

Wesley took him upstairs to meet his grandmother.


	12. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You said I couldn’t tear down this view.”
> 
> He kissed Wilson Fisk for the first time in four years.

 

Wesley graduated from The New School of Architecture and Design, with honors, and  Necha got into med school at UCLA, so they threw a party. It was a small affair; Wesley and Necha, her father and his Grandmother, a few friends from school. Wesley had started doing that, making friends. Turns out it was a pretty easy thing to do when you had free time and half your life wasn’t a lie.

Wesley had sent an email invitation to the man. He had paid for his degree, so Wesley figured it was the least he could do.

His grandmother was so proud. She wouldn’t let him take off the mortar board. He’d shown her how to use his iPhone and she wouldn’t stop taking pictures.

“The two of you, together,” his grandmother ordered.

 Necha would move to California in a few weeks and he was going to miss her so damn much. They put their arms around one another and smiled.

“You know I love you, right?” he said

She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, nearly knocking the stupid hat off his head. “Of course.”

Wesley didn’t really expect Fisk to make an appearance at his small family party. But he did think that maybe the dark sedan that parked outside his building most of the afternoon might have been him.

 

*

 

As planned, Wesley’s position with Fisk and his company became full time after he graduated. It wasn’t always the job he’d dreamed off, but he was good at it. He was great at it, actually. He could have a conference call with Chinese investors, pick up Fisk’s dry cleaning, clear out pay roll for the security team and draft up floor plans for Fisk’s new condo’s all before he’d finished his first cup of coffee in the morning. And Wesley enjoyed being good at his job—whatever it happened to be that day —more than almost anything else.

They were in a town car and Wesley was posting a new want ad for a  tower crane operator because the last one had been fired for being drunk on the job.

“You just missed the turn onto 42nd!” Wesley snapped at the driver. Fisk was traveling to Japan for a few weeks. “If he misses his flight—“

Fisk held up a hand to stop him. “I’m getting a later flight,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

“But you have a meeting in the morning with—“

“I rescheduled. We’re making a quick stop.”

Wesley took a breath to steady himself and the driver went on. They were all the way over on 57th street when the driver pulled up in front of a familiar looking old building. He followed Fisk out of the car and they stood on the sidewalk staring up at the building for a long moment.

“Would you like me to look up the owner?” Wesley asked.

“No need.” Fisk produced keys from his jacket and let them in through a side door. “You really don’t remember this place?” he asked, as they stepped onto the elevator. He pressed the button for the top floor. And as soon as Wesley saw the view it all came rushing back.

The place had been renovated and was fully furnished. The floors were original, wide plank hickory. There was a large open kitchen in the east corner, dark woods to match the floor and exposed beams in the ceiling, a connected dining room with seating for twelve. His desk was under the windows where the lighting was good. Living room, study, bedroom, master bath; all right where Wesley would have put them.

“You were late the other day, you know.” Fisk handed him the keys. “This way you don’t have to commute all the way from Queens. And you need a place of your own anyway.”

Cut up windows looked out onto the Hudson. “You didn’t."

“You said I couldn’t tear down this view.”

Wesley grinned. “Now that I have a place, we’ll have to get you out of that old one bedroom,” he said. And he kissed Wilson Fisk for the first time in four years.

 

*

 

He’d always had clients call him Wesley.

It was what he’d introduced himself as to Fisk.

As the operation grew they acquired new staff. And though everyone else called him James, Fisk never seemed to be able to break the habit.

Fisk gave Wesley money to buy a work wardrobe.

He liked having Wesley with him, in meetings even on business trips. Wesley was still working on his mandarin. He still translated when they did business with the Ukrainians. And if he was going to be seen then he needed to look the part. So very suddenly he owned all of the clothes he’d ever wanted.

He felt silly and proud the first day he strode into Fisk’s office in a navy three piece with a fine silk tie. And he wasn’t sure why, but he hoped that the man would say something. He hoped that Fisk might tell him that he was handsome, just like old times. Even though it wasn’t old times.

He said nothing, just asked Wesley for coffee.

They worked late that night, so late that Fisk became irritable. He was snapping at the other staff. They were having trouble with zoning restrictions on a new project. Wesley had learned that Fisk got disorganized and rash when he was angry about something. It tended to snow ball. Wesley quietly sent the rest of the staff home before letting himself into Fisk’s office.

“We can’t do anything until morning,” he said, gently.

“Stop,” Fisk grumbled.

“You haven’t eaten and—“

“Stop.”

Wesley tried to take the battered file folder from his hands. “You can’t stare at that paperwork all night,” he said. But Fisk grabbed him by the wrist, pinning it to the table.

“I told you to stop!”

It didn’t hurt, but it threatened to. He flexed his hand against Fisk’s grip. “What do you want, then?” Wesley asked. He bent down, laid himself out on the table, his cheek pressed to a print out of a floor plan. “To hold me down? You can, if it means you’ll take a break.”

He let go of Wesley’s wrist. “No. I said I wouldn’t ask that of you—“

But Wesley stayed where he was, splayed both hands across the desk. “You’re not asking. I’m offering.”

He slid a hand up the back of Wesley’s fine new suite jacket, down over the curve of his ass. “These, off,” Fisk said,

Wesley fumbled with his own belt, couldn’t get his slacks down fast enough. Fisk nudged his feet apart.

“You look good in blue,” Fisk said.

 

*

 

It took Wesley years to talk Fisk out of how old apartment.

They would be tearing down the building soon, putting up something new in it’s place.

Then it took Wesley another almost 10 months to find just the right place for him, to have it renovated, to find the right furniture and the right security system, hell the right cook wear, the right case to hold his cufflinks. They couldn’t just be rooms that Fisk live in. It had to feel like a home. 

He called Necha.

She answered on the third ring. “It has been three months since you last called me,” she said, but he could still hear the affection in her voice.  

“Actually, I need to talk to your dear sweet wife.”

There was a long silence. “She’s in her studio,” Necha finally said. “Just a sec.”

“We’ll get brunch next week,” Wesley told her. “I promise.”

He could practically hear the roll of her eyes. “That’s what you always say.”  

And it was what he always said.

Necha ran a free women’s health clinic in Harlem. She had two little girls who called him Uncle James. She and Sarah had basically been together since that night they met in the art gallery. And after his grandmother had died Wesley had started going to their place for Christmas. Sometimes Thanksgiving. Easter if he was free.

There was a shuffling as Necha handed over the phone. He exchanged similar pleasantries and promises with Sara. He asked if she could refer him to a good art dealer.

 

*

 

Wesley made sure his schedule was clear on moving day. He created an inventory, oversaw the hauling and unpacking of every box and crate and garment bag himself. Fisk paced the kitchen through the process, watching anxiously from the corner. He kept walking up to the window and backing down.

Wesley squeezed his shoulder. “You’ll get used to it,” he said.

Fisk nodded. “I know.”

“You’ve earned this,” Wesley said.

Fisk gave him a weak smile before he pulled away, went back to the window. A line of the movers came through the door, carrying large oblong crates.

“What, no, what is that?” Wesley called. “That is not on my list,” he said.

“It’s mine,” Fisk said. “I purchased some art, per your suggestion. The smaller one goes in the bedroom,” he said to the movers. “The larger, in my office.”

Wesley didn’t care much for abstract art. There was some debate about how to go about hanging the Rabbit in The Snow Storm. But Fisk seemed to like it and that was all that mattered. And there were three painting for the office; three portraits off a young man with slim shoulders and pale skin, dark hair and green eyes. The movers gave him some od looks, but none were brave enough to say anything. And all Wesley could do was stand there staring.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Fisk said, quietly coming up behind him.

Wesley couldn’t tear his eyes away. “People will see.”

But Fisk didn’t seem to care. “It’s called a tryptic,” he said.

Wesley smiled. “Yes, I know.”


	13. Epilogue II: or How James Wesley Learned to Fire a Gun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are we even allowed to do that?” James said, more to himself than anyone else.
> 
> The guard's voice went low and he leaned close. James could smell the spice of his cologne, something cheap and heady. For a moment he thought the man would kiss him, he was that close. But instead he said, “Well they don’t own us, do they?”
> 
> James’ phone vibrated in his hands, again. He had worked for Wilson Fisk for eight years. For eight years the job, his devotion to the man, had kept James occupied enough to ignore that he hadn’t been on a date in just as long. And he'd acquiesced to it.
> 
> "No... I guess not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a one shot or something. Like, a fun bonus chapter. But then all of a sudden it was 14000 words and I was crying.

"Are you seeing someone?" Fisk asked.

James scoffed. And later he would wonder if that was where he went wrong. "And when would I have time for that?" he said, not looking up from his phone.

It was the first time he had ever lied to Wilson Fisk.

"You haven't been in the office as much these past months."

"No I-" James could hear the suspicion in the man's voice. He took a deep breath, put his phone in his pocket, straightened reflexively. "I've just- we're doing lots of business with China and the west coast. So I've been keeping odd hours. But things should settle down soon and we'll be back to normal."

Fisk nodded his consent and James fought to look casual as he strolled out of the office.

 

*

 

Eight months earlier he was leaving a meeting with Gao when a man grabbed James by his elbow and spun him around. James startled. The driver of his town car had his weapon unholstered and aimed out the open window in under a second.

James recognized the man though— some sort of hired muscle that Gao kept around her warehouses.

“Oh for the love of—” James turned a scowl on the driver. “What do you think he’s going to do, snap my neck in the middle of the street? Put that away!”

The driver reeled back like he’d been bitten and rolled up the window.

The man laughed. “Sorry, I called for you. But you didn’t— you forgot your phone,” he said, and pulled James’ cell from his pocket.

James snatched it from him. “It never ends,” he sighed. He’d missed a call.

The man shoved his hands in his pockets. “I— I wanted to know, can I call you sometime?”

There were fifteen new messages in James’ email. “What? Why would you call me?"

“So I could ask you out for, I don't know, I was thinking coffee?” He stared at his shoes. “Or a meal or something?”

 James cocked an eyebrow at him. “Oh. Oh, you’re serious?”

The man had thick shoulders and a gun holstered under his jacket. His dark hair was cropped short. A furious shade of pink had crept up into his cheeks. The driver had cracked the window and was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, pretending not to listen.

“Never mind. I’m sorry, I--”

“Are we even allowed to do that?” James said, more to himself than anyone else.

The man’s voice went low and he leaned close. James could smell the spice of his cologne, something cheap and heady. For a moment he thought the man would kiss him, he was that close. But instead he said, “Well they don’t own us, do they?”

James’ phone vibrated in his hands, again. He had worked for Wilson Fisk for almost ten years. For almost ten years the job, his devotion to the man, had kept James occupied enough to ignore the fact that he hadn’t been on a date in just as long. And he'd acquiesced to it.

"No... I guess not.

It had certainly never occurred to James that he might meet someone.

The man offered James his hand. “Remy. It’s good to meet you, officially.”

And James took it. “James Wesley.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Yes, you can call me.”

 

*

 

James told Fisk that he was going out for lunch. The man, Remy, had asked to meet him at a park that was halfway between Gao’s warehouse and James’ office. James decided to walk. He couldn’t take one of the town cars and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that, walked to a place on a nice day.

James found him waiting on a bench, looking easy and comfortable in his jeans and t-shirt, big sunglasses shadowing his face and arms stretched wide along the back of the bench. An enormous white pit bull sat between his feet.

"When you said 'park', I didn't know that you meant..."

“Dog park? Yeah.” Remy took off his sunglasses. There were little creases at the corners of his eyes when he smiled. James hadn't noticed that before. “It’s probably a cheap trick. But I've heard that people find men with dogs charming so.”

James stayed a few steps back. The thing was panting in the heat, barring a row of jagged teeth.

“I also got us lunch,” Remy said. There was a large brown paper bag sitting beside him.

James shook his head. “It's not— It doesn’t bite or anything, does it?”

He laughed a little. “No, Pilot’s a good girl. But she is deaf. She uses hand signals. I can teach you.”

The dog looked up at James, beating its tail against the ground.

“There are, um, picnic tables,” Remy, offered. “I thought we could...?”

“I-- Yes, ok.” He edged forward a little. “I mean, that sounds lovely.”

Remys climbed to his feet, gathered up the bag of food and the dog’s leash.

James hadn't noticed how tall he was either. “You look— ah, handsome,” he said, because it seemed like a thing that people said in this sort of situation.

“So do you.” Remy’s ran a hand over his hair. “I mean. You always do. But— Yeah.”

The park wasn't too crowded. Remy had brought tacos from a place that he said was nearby; some with grilled fish and some with tofu.  
Remy was a vegan. James wouldn't have guessed that.

The food was good, even by James’ standards. The managed not to talk too much about work. James had just been to Venezuela for a meeting with some investors. And he's spent the whole trip eating empanadas made by old women who sold them from carts on the street. Remy needled him a little, asked how someone so skinny could be so obsessed with food.

Occasionally, Pilot lumbered over with a tennis ball in her mouth and it was a little drool covered but James actually enjoyed throwing it for her, watching her gallop after it and bring the ball back.  He didn't even yell when she jumped in excitement and left a muddy paw print on his tie.

Remy told him about moving to the city. He had come with Gao, from California, to help her set up shop. He was her head of security not just some hired muscle. He had grown up in LA. He surfed. He was looking forward to driving down to Montauk to surf.

"So you’re from _here_?” James asked, lamely. “I guess, I’ve heard you speak mandarin. So I assumed—”

“That because I look Asian and the woman I work for is Chinese, I must be from China?”

“I’m an idiot. I’m sorry, I—”  
“My mother,” Remy said, “is from Hong Kong. My Father was American, Jewish.”

“I’m a racist idiot," James said.

And Remy laughed and smiled at him in that way that made his eyes crease a little at the corners. “Yeah, a little.”

“I’m sorry,” James said, again.

“You should be.”

And for a second James thought, once more, that he was going to kiss him. But then Pilot shuffled over with the ball. And James’ phone began to ring. And then it didn’t happen.

 

*

 

Then, for some reason that James couldn’t possibly imagine, Remy called him a second time. And he asked if James would like to go out with him again.

They went to a gun range.

"I haven’t lived here long," Remy said. "But, you know, I hear that there are, like, a lot of cool bars and museums and interesting places to hang out."

James placated him with a smile. "Cool is overrated."

Mostly, he’d spent the last week thinking about Remy’s shoulders. And his gun holster. And James had decided that he wanted to learn how to shoot.

Remy was patient with him. “How do you do your job without knowing how to fire a gun?”

James liked the way he pressed up against his back, spoke soft and close to his ear.

“I— I was afraid of them,” James confessed.

His first few rounds he flinched, closed his eyes and missed the mark.

“That’s good,” Remy said, quietly. “I hate them. But you really should know how. Remember to keep your chin up.”  
Remy was a frighteningly good shot. He showed James how to stand, feet planted firmly so the kickback didn’t knock him over. Showed him to aim for the head, heart, and knee caps.

And James had always been a quick study.

James never managed to land a shot right on center. But Remy whooped and cheered and kissed him when James got close.

“I thought this was un—romantic?”

“Uncool, I said it was uncool.”

James kissed him back.

 

*

 

James messed up their third date, too.

First, he was late because Fisk had needed him in a meeting with Leland.

Then traffic was a nightmare. Remy had been sitting in the dimply lit sushi restaurant a full twenty minutes when he finally got there. And it wasn’t until James was dropping into the chair across from him, exhausted, that he remembered that Remy didn’t eat meat.

“Oh my god,” he said, turning the menu over and over. There weren’t a lot of options. “I’m horrible. I’m sorry. We can go somewhere else.”

But Remy insisted that it was fine.

They ordered. James got a bottle of plum wine. Remy had said that he didn’t drink, but James kept forgetting, kept offering him some. He couldn’t focus. So much of his job was just about being charming, pleasing people, giving Fisk what he wanted. But he was too exhausted to do it just then, to be charming for Remy, to be what he wanted. The conversation kept lulling, painfully.

"So, um, tell me how you came to have a deaf dog?" he asked. "Not just to charm me, I assume?"

James had spied a picture Pilot set as the background of Remy’s phone. He liked the way Remy smiled, like he was a little embarrassed, when he talked about her.

"Well, I was making a delivery for the boss lady a couple years back." He shrugged like it was a normal thing to say, like it didn't matter if someone overheard. "And this guy had her chained up behind his house. She was really skinny, covered in fleas. The guy said he had her for security, but she's- you know. I think he beat her. And he never let her inside. I mean, it was the middle of the summer in LA. So." 

"So you stole her?"

Remy gave him a coy smile. "In so many words."

When the meal was over they bickered a little about who would pay the check. James felt relieved when they stepped out of the restaurant into the fresh air. He went to hail a cab and Remy, caught him by the lapel of his jacket, pulling him back and kissing him softly.

"Does she know that you call her 'Boss Lady'?" James asked.

Remy nipped at his bottom lip. "Yes, actually, she does."

It was a slower kiss than the ones they'd shared before. Remy fit his hands around James’ waist, under his jacket, holding him close. And maybe it was the wine but James let his mouth go soft, let himself open to it. He got brave and curled his fingers through Remy's hair.

Then, Remy pulled away. He hailed a cab and put James in it. He thanked James for dinner and told him goodnight. The whole way home James wondered what he'd done wrong.

 

*

 

James caught a cold, in the middle of the god damned summer.

The next time he saw Remy they were at a meeting in Gao's warehouses, again. It was a Friday. And it was late. And he just wished they’d all stop talking. He wanted to go home, go to bed.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

 _'Are you alright?'_ the text message read.

He looked up to find Remy watching him from the corner, a concerned look on his face.

He sent back a quick reply. ' _Just allergies.'_

The Russians had graced them with their presence. Leland was even there

_'You look like you're going to pass out._

_'I guess maybe I caught a bug or something.'_

They'd been arguing for hours. James was sweating into the creases of his suite and, somehow, also freezing.

_'You think? When was the last time you slept? Or ate something?'_

_'I don't know."_

James’ whole body ached and he was too tired to deal with any of it.

_'Well, not to be forward. But my place is only a block and half from here. And I make a pretty good hot and sour soup.'_

James snickered. Gao gave him a harsh look.

' _It is forward.'_

_'But you're not saying no?’_

Remy texted him the address. James watched him whisper something to one of the other men on the security crew before slipping out.

The meeting lasted another excruciating 45 minutes. It was only a block and half but James still had the driver take him. When Remy came down to let him in he was wearing an apron.

He laid a hand across James’ forehead and frowned. “Hon, you are burning up.”

Something about the endearment sent a jolt down James’ spine. "This is a cute look,” he said, plucking at his apron strings.

"Well, I take soup making very seriously."

In the elevator up, James had to resist the urge to lean on him. Pilot greeted them at the door. The apartment already smelled of cooking food. Remy gave him a sweater and a pair of flannels to change in to. James was about to protest when Remy gently pushed him into the bathroom.

"I left some Nyquil on the sink. You're not going to wear a suit all night, are you?"

The clothes were too big for him but James couldn’t come up with a cogent argument just then so he put them on. He choked down some cold medicine. When he came back out Remy was in the tiny kitchen chopping vegetables. Judge Judy was playing on the television.

"Make yourself comfortable," he called. "There's a blanket on the sofa. Find something on TV if you want."

James couldn't remember the last time he’d watched TV.

The apartment wasn't very big. It had warm wooden floors though, good windows, furniture that was more comfortable than stylish. There were a lot of book shelves and pictures on the walls.  By the sofa there was a large dog bed. In the corner by the television there was a surfboard and a rolled up yoga mat. The coffee table was littered with old mail. James fell into the plush sofa and pulled the blanket around him.

"This is a really nice place," he said. "It looks... like _you_ live here."

He meant it as a compliment but he wasn't sure it sounded that way.

Remy laughed. "Well that's something. I can see the river from my bedroom. It's not the ocean, but beggars can't be choosers."

James shook his head. "I'm always saying the wrong things to you. Doing the wrong things. Why do you make me say the wrong things?"

Remy laughed but didn’t answer. Pilot jumped up on the sofa beside him, put her head in his lap like she understood. The dog was large and warm and soft and he was so cold.

“She likes you,” Remy said. “She doesn’t usually like men.” He pressed a kiss into James’ hair and sat a bowl of soup down in front of him. "Now be careful with that. It's hot."

"It smells amazing," James sighed.

"Would you believe me if I told you I got the recipe from Madam Gao herself?"

"No!"

Remy sat on the opposite end of the sofa. He kicked his bare feet up on the coffee table. James wished that he were a little closer.

"Can I ask, how long have you been working for her?”

“Basically, since I was a kid.”

James cocked an eyebrow at him. “Well I need to hear that story.”

Remy took a deep breath. “Well, there was this guy," he said, kind of shyly. "Ethan, he lived in the neighborhood where I grew up. He was a dealer and he was straight. But I was 14 and didn't know anything. So I got involved with his crew."

James had never met anyone that had been in the business longer than him.

"And, you know, one thing lead to another. I had a knack for it, I guess. I outranked Ethan by the time I was 19."

"And Gao took notice?" James asked.

"In a way." He shook his head. "I'd started using the product. Skimming money. And heroin. And it- I got out of control. So I was hauled in to see Gao. She could have killed me. But instead she decided that I’d work it off."

"You’re— indentured to Gao?”  He couldn’t think of a better word.

“No. No, that was years ago." Remy actually laughed. "I mean; I know she's cold. But she cares, in her way. She took a chance on me, got me clean. And when she expanded the operation to New York she asked me to come with her. I'm grateful. My life now, it’s better-- more normal --than most recovering addicts could ever manage so.”

Pilot had fallen asleep and began to snore.

“Well, that was a downer,” Remy sighed.

On the television two men in cheap suits were yelling at one another over a bad business deal while Judge Judy looked on, exasperated.

"I think this is the part where you tell me yours," he said gently.

“You won’t like it. You might not like me if I tell you.”

But Remy leaned in, smiling conspiratorially. “I was a drug dealer and a junkie. How much worse could it be?”

"Worse. Do you watch Judge Judy often?" James asked.

He flushed a furious shade of pink. "I work nights. And I am home a lot during the day. And she is the highest paid woman in entertainment."  
James laughed. They ate more. And talked more. And they watched more episodes of Judge Judy because Remy had them recorded on his dvr. James chocked it up to the cold meds. But he’d slumped over, put his head on Remy’s shoulder. And James didn't notice that he was starting to fall asleep until he turned off the TV.

He steered James into the bedroom and put him to bed, put a glass of water on the nightstand and told him good night.

 

*

 

In the morning James woke to a view of the Hudson. Pilot was curled against his back. Remy had hung his suit on the back of the closet door and James spent a long time thinking about getting dressed before deciding against it. He was careful not to wake the large sleeping hound and dragged himself out of bed.

He found Remy in the kitchen, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "Hey, you've come out the other side. How are you feeling?"

"Great, actually."

"Well I'm really glad to hear it." He moved in to kiss him and James decided to do it, quick, before he could change his mind.

“I- I was a sex worker,” he said.

Remy stopped short. "What?"

“A prostitute. Fisk employed me first for my services as a prostitute. I got into some trouble and he got me out. He gave me a real job. He put me through school. And I'm sorry. It was unfair for me to ask you and then not tell—”

"That's why?" Remy shook his head. "You thought I wouldn't want to be with you because of that?"

“People think— if they find out –they think it means something.” There was tightening in James’ chest. He squared his shoulders. His voice went cool and business like. “Like I’m unqualified to do my job because I was sleeping with him. Or I have AIDS. Or that I’ll just sleep with anyone. Or I'm out for his money. Or I'm still sleeping with him. Or-"

"James."

"But it's not true," he snapped. “None of that is true.”

"I know. And I would never-" Remy finished what he’d started, hooked his fingers in the collar of the too big sweatshirt and kissed him. There was a bite to it. He curled his hands along the curve of James ribs, holding him closer.

"Since we’re sharing, you should know,” Remy said. “I do have HIV.  So if that's going to be a problem..."

His mouth fell open and Remy took advantage of it; deepening the kiss, biting at his bottom lip. He boxed James up against the counter.

"That's not how I meant it.“ James whined, held on to Remy’s shoulders to keep himself steady. “When I said that. I didn't know—"

"How could you?” Remy said, drifting away from his mouth, down along the line of his throat. “But I needed to tell you. If this is going to move forward. I mean, if you want it to. Because I want it to."

James could feel him, smiling wolfishly against his skin. He wanted to shake him. "I'm always saying the wrong things to you! And you just let me. And never get angry. Why don’t you—"

"I think you're missing the point." Remy eased back, cradled his face between his broad palms. "Do you understand? Is it alright?”

"Of course.” It came out sounding curt. Because how absurd, that Remy would tell him that he was sick and then ask if James was ok with it? “Are you alright? I know that there are… medications. That people live a long time. Is that why? The healthy living? The vegan thing and—“

Remy laughed. “The vegan thing?”

“And the not drinking and the-"

"You’re saying the wrong things again,” Remy said. And he kissed James quiet. “And we can talk about it later. Right now we’re in the middle of something.”

“Middle of—?”

Remy reached down, cupped the tops of his thighs and hauled him up onto the kitchen counter. James yelped and laughed and nearly knocked his head on the cabinets. Pilot clattered out into the kitchen to see what was going on. And across the room, on the coffee table, James’ cell phone started ringing.

 

*

 

Remy calls to tell him that they can’t be together for the 4th of July.

“There’s an event, barbeque and beer and stuff, for all the men on my crew,” he says. “I’d invite you, but—“

“I know,” James says. And he does know. But it still comes out sounding curt. “It’s fine.”

“It’s mostly a work thing. Trust me, I’d rather be with you,” Remy says carefully.

“I’m sure,” James said.

And Remy sighed on the other side of the line. “I mean it. I— I’ll call you later,” he said.

James decided to catch up on some work. The office was empty. He could concentrate. He wasn’t upset. He really wasn’t. He understood. And he understood that it would always be this way— as long as they were together, if they were together –they would always have to keep it a secret, keep it at a great distance from their work lives.

It was late when Remy called him again. “Come downstairs.”

James tried, and failed, not to sound annoyed. “How did you know I’d be—“  
Remy laughed. “It’s a holiday. You don’t have plans. Of course you’re at work. Now come downstairs.”

The line clicked and went silent. And on the elevator down James prepared a short speech about discretion and why it was crucial to their survival. But then he saw Remy, standing there smiling with two brightly colored ice cream containers in his hands.

God damn ice cream.

Remy kissed him. There was a whirl and crack of light in the sky.

“What are you—?”

“Kissing you. With fireworks. So stop talking.”

James laughed. And Remy nipped at his mouth.

“I really did want to be with you,” he said.

“I know.”

“And I brought ice cream.”  
“Yeah,” James sighed. “I saw that.”

Remy produced two plastic spoons from his back pocket. They ate ice cream and watched the fireworks. Remy had to go back to work and so did he.

 

*

 

They have sex for the first time in a hotel.

Remy asked to meet him outside The One UN. “I realize this looks lurid,” he said. It was around one in the morning and he took James’ hand. “But I promise it’s not.”

James couldn’t help but snort at that, and they strode through the lobby with a purpose, went straight for the elevators and headed up.

They got off on the 27th floor, into an eerie quiet. “I think it’s over here.”

“You don’t know where we’re going?”

Remy produced a key card from his jacket— “I know where we’re going.” –and open a door marked employee only, lead him along a long narrow hallway.

James was tired. “You don’t know where we’re going.”

He gave him an annoyed little kiss. “I know where we’re going.” And he pushed through another door and James gasped.

He’d lived in New York his whole life, and somehow the view of the skyline never failed to take his breath away. The windows were floor to ceiling and this high up they could see the whole city, lit, reflecting off the surface of the large swimming pool.

Remy opened up his messenger bag, passed James a pair of shorts. “I couldn’t imagine you owning swim trunks, or skinny dipping,” he said. “So--”

Both of those things were true, but he wasn’t going to admit it. They changed clothes with their backs to one another. The swim shorts were blue, which was James’ favorite color. And he didn’t think Remy even knew that, but it still left a little flutter of warmth in his chest.

“I have a friend who works here,” Remy said. “The cameras are down and it’s ours the rest of the night.”

Remy had thick muscled thighs and James tried not to stare. When he was younger he had banked on his thinness, his bodily frailty, to be attractive. But standing in front of Remy this way he felt gangly and absurd.

 “Are you coming?” he asked

“Yeah, yes”

There was something endearing and soft to Remy’s hips and belly and James wanted to touch him there. He wondered what it would be like to lay his head on Remy’s stomach.

“Good.” Remy smiled and dove in.

James sat on the edge of the pool to watch him complete a lap, watched the easy roll of his broad shoulders and the way his arms cut through the water.

Remy resurfaced at his feet. “This is not in.”

“I’m getting there,” he said. 

Remy caught him around the ankle and hauled James in. He cursed and it echoed around the room. But then Remy smiled and kissed him and being angry seemed impossible. He shoved Remy away and splashed him.  
“Childish,” he scoffed.

And it was. Because they couldn’t stop giggling.

Remy kissed him and put a hand over his eyes. “Marco.”

James kept them shut. “That’s not how the game works,” he said. “I say Marco”

They kissed and touched in a brief teasing way that made it feel like they were getting away with something. Remy kept getting close and then pulling back, kept slipping though James’ fingers.

“Marco.”

“Polo.”

Finally, Remy caught him around the waist, hauling him close, kissing him full on the mouth.

James opened his eyes. Something about being chest to chest made his breath catch. “You’re a cheat,” he said,

Remy didn’t look at all contrite. The kiss turned hungry. And his hands were rough, pressing and grasping along the line of James’ ribs, down his shoulders to the small of his back.

“We should stop,” Remy said.

“No, we should not.”

Remy ducked down to kiss his chest, slid a hand between James’ legs, squeezed his cock through the fabric of the blue shorts. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.” James shuddered. He tried not to think about how long it had been since someone touched him like that. “Please."

Remy hoisted him up over the edge of the pool, set him down a little too hard. James fell back on his elbows. It stung and he couldn’t help but think of Fisk then, about his control, and how Remy didn't have that. He yanked James out of his wet shorts with more rough enthusiasm. And James thought it was ok, maybe more than ok, to be wanted so much.

Remy shouldered his knees apart. "God, look at you.” He kissed the head of James’ cock, absurdly and sweetly, and tipped James into his mouth.

The tile was cool against his skin and he had to close his eyes because it was too much, too fast; Remy in the water, the hot steady pull of his lips. James’ fingers dug in at the back of his skull. His hips stuttered and hitched up.

"Sorry, sorry," he gasped.

Remy hummed and pulled off of him, smiling and breathless, tongue just lingering on his skin.

"No. I like it,” he said, coy, looking up at James through his lashes. And he swallowed him down again, all the way, until he was nuzzling up against James’ belly.

James tangled his fingers in Remy’s hair and held him there for the span of a breath, maybe two. Remy hummed and James didn't want to but he thought about Fisk then. He fucked Remy's mouth and thought about Fisk and how he was the last person James had had sex with. Remy let out a moan, from some place deep in his chest. And James watched, a little amazed, as he snaked a hand down into his own shorts. He thought about how he'd maybe never had sex with anyone when it wasn't in exchange for something. He'd maybe never had sex with someone just because he wanted to.

Remy looked up at him, hazy eyed with want and that set him over the edge.

After, he watched as Remy rinsed his mouth in the pool and hauled himself up onto the deck.

“That was not how I expected this to go,” he panted, sprawling out beside him on the tile.

James was suddenly cold. He reached up, touched his fingers to Remy's roughed pink lips. "As usual, you're full of surprises," he said.  
Remy pressed a kiss to his knuckles. "What? A guy can't get off giving head?"

"Well, I mean, when they carry a gun to work. Also,” He let his hand drift down to the waist of Remy's shorts. "In the pool?”

Remy laughed.

"Tourists swim here!" And suddenly James was laughing to. He didn't think he'd ever laughed after sex either.

"I told you I liked it." Remy said, the edge of a growl in his voice. He caught James by his wrist and leaned over to kiss him. "I really liked it. And I don't see what my gun has to do with anything."

"But not what you expected?”

Remy shrugged. “I expected a bed. And I wanted to be able to make you pancakes in the morning.”

James scrunched up his nose. “Vegan pancakes?”

“I make bitchin’ vegan pancakes.”

He remembered very suddenly that he was very tired. "It's not too late to make that happen."

Remy  walked his fingers down, along the flat of his stomach. And he kissed James throat, tasting him there. "Do you even know?" he asked. "Do you know how beautiful you are?"

Eventually hey peeled themselves off the tile, dressed quickly. Remy helped him comb back his wet hair. In the elevator James got brave and took his hand.

As they stepped outside his phone began to ring.

 

*

 

James had an assistant; Marci, a law student from Columbia. And she was good at her job, insomuch as she got things done with efficiency and consistency. But she was also willfully insubordinate. Assistants were supposed to pander but she was too smart, too good, for that. She reminded James of himself at that age. And if he was honest, she also scared him a little.

“You’re late,” she said, as he strolled into the office.

She didn’t take his jacket or his brief case. And she kept his messages neatly stacked on the corner of her desk where he could get them himself, thank you very much. It was a particularly tall stack today.

“And you’re wearing the same suite you wore yesterday,” Marci said, eyes narrowed.

James sighed. 

James had forgotten to set the alarm on his phone.

“Coffee, black, iced,” he said, sifting through them. “Hold all my calls. I don’t want to see anyone.”

“Yes, sir!” she quipped. And James knew she was only being chipper about it because it meant she could go charge some expensive coffee and a pastry to his credit card.

James kept a spare suite in his office. He drew the blinds and changed and made a perfunctory effort to work. After leaving the hotel, James had had to go smooth over some disagreement between Leland and the Russians. He hadn’t gotten any sleep after. Marci returned with coffee and a bagel for him. About half way through the day Remy sent him a text.

_‘Hey…’_

James stared at the ellipses for a long time, deciding what to send back.

_‘I was just thinking about you.’_

_‘Oh?’ *hair flip emoji*_

James laughed. And a moment later Marci poked her head into his office. He slammed his phone back down on the desk, feeling like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have.

“Everything alright in here?” she asked.

“Why would it not—?”

Marci cocked an eyebrow at him. “I heard a strange noise. Are you smiling?”

James scowled. “You can close the door behind you,” he said.

She held up her hands in surrender. And as soon as the door was closed he could hear her giggling on the other side.

James picked up his phone again.

_‘I was thinking about what a tragedy it is that I still haven’t seen you naked.’_

He sent the text and regretted it immediately.

A few minutes later Remy sent him a picture. And James was laughing again.

 

*

 

Remy asked if they could do something touristy. And James did not sneer. And he did not condescend.

It was, for most New Yorkers, James included, instinctual to resent people from out of town. And Remy was very much from out of town. So James made a concerted effort not to hold it against him.

“I just, you know, don’t feel like I have a handle on the city, yet,” he said

He kept getting lost riding the trains, even just walking places; kept showing up late to dinner reservations. And James was understanding and he did not hold it against him.

He took a deep breath.  “It’s a grid. It’s not that hard.”

 _“It’s a grid. It’s not that hard,”_ Remy said in an annoying, high pitched tone. He did that sometimes; whenever James said something that he didn’t like he repeated it at a nasal pitch.

James wasn’t sure what tourists did, but he sighed them up for a walking architecture tour of Manhattan.  

He had started noticing other things about Remy, not just that he was not from New York; oddities, silly things. Like that Remy walked slower than James was used to, taking long languid strides wherever they went. Their tour group was mostly old ladies and high school students from the mid-west. And Remy was easy to pick out in the crowd, by both his height and his pace; moving at half speed while the rest of New York navigated around him at an aggressive clip.

From a little distance James thought this _laissez_ - _faire_ pace looked charming and sexy. But Remy also kept falling behind and god help him, it grated on James’ very last nerve.

The high school students and grandmothers made James nervous to stand too close to Remy, to hold his hand or his eye contact for too long. But Remy didn’t care.

He didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of him. This was another thing that James has noticed. He wasn’t afraid of anything, least of all, what other people thought of him. He was silly. And irreverent. And self-serving. He said what he whatever he wanted.

Remy said, “Look at this,” holding the pamphlet out for James to see. And when he ducked down to steal a kiss from him the students looked away, but they didn’t say anything.

When Remy wanted something he just did it.

The tour guide—some 20-something probably only doing this as a summer job –didn’t know what he was talking about and James lost patience with him quickly.

“That is not when the I-beam was invented,” James sighed, loudly. “It took four years to complete Stark tower, not five.”

Remy looked equal parts embarrassed and impressed.

“The Baxter building was not, at the time of it’s construction, the second tallest building in Manhattan. Not even close.”

After, they walked back to Remy’s apartment. James took time to point out the street numbers, and names.

“ _A grid,_ ” Remy said, in the annoying voice.

“Yes, a grid.”

“I don’t even know why we paid for that tour. I could have just followed you around.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and moved on at a stroll. “How did you know all that stuff anyway?” he asked.

James had to slow down to keep pace with him. “My degree, it’s in architecture. Reciting random facts is about as much as I use it these days, so.”

“Yeah? Well at least that’s practical. I studied literature.”

And suddenly James stopped all together. “Where did you go to college?”

“Berkeley,” Remy laughed, kept walking. “Drug dealers go to college,” he said. "I mean, I was supplying the entire campus with adderall and ecstasy. But I still graduated with honors."

James had to jog to catch up. “So Pilot. Like from Jane Eyre?”

Remye gave him a wide smile. “Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

 

*

 

“Are you awake?” James asked.

James thought that the sex was different, somehow. Different in a good way.

He nipped at the line of Remy’s jaw, kissed him there. “Wake up.”

Something about being with him had begun to make James’ chest ache. He made him feel desperate.

“But we’re supposed to be sleeping in,”

“Come on.”

Remy groaned and swatted him across the ass. “ Go back to sleep.”

By some miracle they’d both got a weekend off. James didn’t have any meetings to attend, no deals to broker. Remy had told his men not to call him unless someone was actually dead or something was on fire. And James supposed that they could have made plans, they could have gone out and done something with their free time. But this was as far as they’d gotten, sleeping in.

James nuzzled in against the side of his neck. “Is that what you want? I’d let you. Spank me, I mean. If you just—“

Remy snorted into the pillows.

He could be so careful, when they had the time. James had never been with someone that took such care with him. But Remy was strong, too. And he flipped James onto his back with an impressive ease.

“No.” He draped himself over James’ chest, laid his head back down. “X _iǎo māo,_ just one more hour.”

James rolled his eyes. “Kitten? Really?”

Remy snorted. “Yes really.” And he splayed his hand wide across James’ chest, ran his thumb along the line of his collar bone. “Because of the way you sleep, curled up against my chest. And you make those cute noises. And—”

“What noises?”

“—And you are literally waking me up at an ungodly hour because you’re hungry. Like an actual kitten.”

“I do not make noises.”

“Yes, you do.”

James opened his mouth to protest. But Remy kissed him before he could get to that. He pressed two fingers over James’ bottom lip, along the curve of his tongue. And he reached his wet fingers down between James’ thighs and—

James cursed, because really of all the pet names he could have chosen. And he arched and bit his lip. And he. He made a noise. Remy worked his fingers inside him and James made a soft rumbling noise from some place deep in chest.

Remy kissed his heated cheeks, gave him a self-satisfied smile.

“Shut up,” James groaned.

“I didn’t say anything.”  

“You’re insufferable.”

Remy laughed.

“Please.” James wound his arms around him, holding tight to Remy’s shoulders. “Please, I need it—“

It sounded like he was begging.

“Need it, huh? You’ll have to show me.”

James thought maybe he was willing to beg.

 

*

 

They had their first fight in the back of a cab. Well. It started at the start of the evening when James had been late to meet Remy for a movie. It had continued with a heated, hushed argument about diet coke, which James had asked for but Remy had failed to order. It was a horror film. James hated horror films. He had told Remy that. And then the fight had spilled out into the cab.

“We _always_ go to my place.” 

“I like your apartment,” James said

James was a liar.

It was just part of his job; lying for Fisk, to protect him and his name, to get him what he wanted. He was just so in the habit. And it made things complicated. It made it hard to get to know someone.

“But why? Why do we never go to your place? Why have I never been to your apartment?

The cab driver was a younger guy. He was checking baseball scores on his phone. They’d been sitting at the curb outside the movie theater for almost five minutes. The meter was running, he didn’t care.

James leaned forward in his seat. “Driver, 49th st. please?”

“No! I want an answer. I want to know why we’ve been fucking all this time but I’ve never seen where you live.”

The driver sighed, and went back to staring at his phone.

James didn’t even know how not to lie anymore, even about little things. Even about stupid things.

“Oh, so that’s all we’ve been doing? Just fucking?”

“Is it because you think I’m too low rent or something?

“I don’t!”

“I know you make more than me. And you probably have, like, a bathroom that’s bigger than my whole apartment or—“

“That’s not— You know what? Fine. I don’t care. Fine.”

James gave his address to the driver and he looked mildly annoyed that he’d actually have to drive. They spent the whole ride in silence. When Remy reached across the cab to take his hand James shrugged him off.

He paid the young cab driver but didn’t tip him, which he knew was unfair. And he led Remy down the alley along the side of the building.

Remy lagged a few steps behind. “Where are we going?”

“Back entrance. Fisk has his own security in the lobby,” James said stiffly.

They took the freight elevator up. And the silence between the persisted until they were standing outside his door and James was fishing for his keys.

Remy sighed, heavily. “ _James._ ”

“Don’t.” James shoved open the door and pushed inside, flipped on the lights.

Remy stood in the entry for a long moment, just staring. “I…” He waved a hand out at the apartment; James’ clean, open, modern, meticulously decorated apartment. “Wow. Just… wow.”

“Are you happy now?”

Remy scoffed, smiling. “You said, and I quote, that you had a one bedroom in some old building.”

“It is old.” James tossed his Jacket on the sofa and went to the kitchen, pulled down a wine glass from the cabinet. “Late 1800’s, actually. It was a factory. And then a warehouse, I think. And there is only one bedroom.”

“It looks like you have the whole floor.”

James pulled a bottle of wine from the fridge, didn’t bother to look at the label and poured himself a large glass. “So?”

“So this place is beautiful and you sat on my crappy sofa in my 500 square foot hovel and told me it was nice.”

James took a long pull from his wine. “It is nice. It’s more than nice. And this,” he said, gesturing with his glass, “This is… boring. And embarrassing. And it looks exactly the way it did the day Fisk gave it to me. Fisk gave this to me. And he’s got cameras in the elevators and security all over the place. You are the first person, save for my cleaning lady, that I’ve ever had over. The only thing I do here is sleep. Half my clothes are at my office. Do you see any family photos? I mean, there isn’t even art on the walls because—”

“X _iǎo māo—“_

James sighed. “I like your apartment because it’s a home. You have pictures and books and a dog and books and a kitchen where you cook things, dirty clothes on your bedroom floor—“

“You are drinking that really fast.” Remy took the wine from him and set it aside.

“This isn’t a home. I’ve never touched half the things in here. There aren’t groceries in my fridge, just old take out and wine. I can’t make you breakfast in the morning or—”

“ _Kitten_ —“

“Stop calling me that!”

Remy laughed. “You love it.” And he gathered James up, caught him by the waist and pulled him close. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I pushed. That wasn’t fair.”

James sniffed, pressed his forehead to Remy’s shoulder. “You think I’m being silly.”

 “Yeah. A little,” he said, kissing him softly. “But it’s ok. Now why don’t you give me a tour?”

 

*

 

Remy took him to the beach, in New Jersey.

James watched, over the top of his sunglasses as he made his way out of the water; hair plastered to his forehead. After just a few hours in the sun his skin had gone a deep olive.

He propped his board in the sand and flopped down beside him on their blanket. “You hate this,” he said.  

“No. I did not say that.”

It was a Wednesday, late in the season, late in the day, so there weren’t too many people around; just them and a few errant tourists and teenagers. Remy had found them a secluded spot on the sand. A little way down the beach Pilot was terrorizing seagulls.

“You’re making a face,” he said.

 James had packed a basket full of food and Remy set to rummaging through it: bread and cheeses, pickled vegetables. Remy picked out a wedge of melon, took a bite. James watched the juice run down his chin, watched him wipe it away with the back of his hand.

“I’m making a face because this book is terrible.” He’d brought a paperback. He’d heard that that was what people did, read paperbacks at the beach. “And I don’t hate it. But… it is New Jersey.”

“It’s the ocean.”

“You can see the ocean in New York.”

Remy looked back out at the water, his face going soft. “Not the same.”

James had left his cell phone in the car, but he tried not to think about that. He’d been trying not to think about it all day. He’d been reaching into his pocket as though it were still there, all day. “I, um, I liked watching you,” he said carefully. It was a half true statement, because James didn’t really understand the allure of it, going out there on a flimsy looking board, being pushing back to shore. And he thought his heart had stopped the first time Remy fell, got pulled under. But still, it really had been incredible, the ease with which he moved, the casual way he cut through the water.

Remy leaned over and kissed him, smiling. He tasted sweet and salty. “I think I like that you like watching me.”

The sun was turning a dusky orange. Remy pulled on his sweatshirt and laid out beside him. James picked up his book again. They’d have to go soon, before it got too cold, if they wanted to make it back to Manhattan before the traffic got too bad. But just then it was ok. It was better than ok, to sit in the sand and read his terrible book.

“Thank you, for doing this.” He reached up, ran his fingers along James’ chin. “Even though you hate it.”

“Shut up.” James kissed him. He wasn’t ready to go home yet; back to work, back to the city, even if they were in New Jersey. James stretched out beside him, reached down and stroked Remy’s cock through his wet swim trunks.

Remy gasped. “Someone’ll see”

And James shushed him, got his hand down the front of his shorts.

 

*

 

It got cold, fast. And Remy did not adjust well to New York in the fall. He didn’t own a coat. Or even a proper jacket. So James took him to Gentry, in Brooklyn, to get one. Well, of course, not just one.

“Tell me about your family?” Remy eyed the price tag on a blue wool duffle coat before pulling it on and stepping back in front of the mirror.

James shook his head. He thought the toggles were silly. “Not that one,” he said.

Remy pulled the coat off, laid it on the pile of discards. “Tell me about your family?” he asked, again.

“Try this.” James passed him a charcoal colored pea coat. “There’s not much to tell.”

They’d been doing this for nearly an hour and couldn’t reach any sort of consensus. If James liked one, he didn’t, and visa-versa. James could shop all day and he could tell that Remy was mostly humoring him.

“Tell me anyway,” he said.

Remy was drawn to the sportier coats; quilted parkas, denim jackets. He was particularly attached to a black bomber jacket with pleather sleeves. He’d tried on a full fur coat with a hood, insisting it was his favorite, just to watch James cringe. And he didn’t see the point of owning a trench coat, a top coat and an overcoat but James was planning to convince him, which was to say that he was planning to buy them for him anyway.

“Why the sudden interest?”

The tweed was nice against his skin. The collar was high and sharp and he stood in front of the mirror, fiddling with the buttons, for a long time. “You realize,” he said carefully, “we’ve been doing this almost five months?”

James feigned surprise. “Really?” But of course he had known. And that was why they were shopping.

“Five months is a— a long time,” Remy sighed. “For me. Anyway.”

That was why he’d forced Remy to try on thirty coats. Because James knew that it meant something, that he should do something, because it was a long time. Especially for them. But James wasn’t sure how to say that. So he was buying him coats instead. 

He pulled a scarf off a nearby rack, a thick knit in a deep blue. He wound it around Remy’s neck “My, um, my parents died when I was a kid. So my grandmother, she raised me.”.

Remy winced. “X _iǎo māo—“_

He called James that all the time now. James would never admit it, but it was growing on him. “She was born in Ukraine, came to the states after WWII. She is, without question, the strongest women I’ve ever met, and that includes, well.”

Remy smiled. “The Boss Lady.”

“She still lives in her own apartment in Queens and makes the best pierogis in the whole world. And um, she kind of doesn’t understand the bi-sexual thing. But I think she would— she will like you.”

James couldn’t stop fussing over the scarf and Remy covered his hands with his own, making him still. “She _will_ like me?”

“Well, if you want to meet her. You know, people do that sort of thing, when they’ve been together for almost five months.”

“Well.” Remy cleared his throat. “I, ah. I think I like this one.”

“Good, I do too.”

They found him a couple scarves, a good pair of gloves. Remy only argued a little when James said he was going to pay. They walked away with the pea coat, the top coat, a denim jacket with a hood and the duffle because Remy liked it. He wore it out of the store and James decided that the toggles were kind of charming

James thought maybe he’d get him the racer jacket for Christmas.

Remy looked a little embarrassed as they loaded all of the bags into a cab. James gave the driver his address got his phone from his pocket and started looking for a place to get dinner. Remy leaned across the cab to kiss him.

“So you’re bi?”

“Something like that.” James let out a long held breath, stayed focused on his phone. “Is that a problem?”

“No, kitten. Definitely not a problem.”

Remy pulled aside the collar of James’ coat, kissed him sweet and slow along the line of his throat. James kept his eyes on his phone.

“How do you feel about Thai?”

“You know; we’ve never talked about exes. Tell me about the last woman you were with.”

“No. What about Italian?”

 

*

 

Remy called him at the office, in the middle of a Friday.

“It’s… loud, over there.”

“Yeah,” James sighed and shut the door to his office. They were courting some new business from a Saudi arms/drug dealer and people had been rushing around all day to get things ready. James was going to spend most of the next five days wining and dining him. “Are we still on for tonight?” he asked.

“We have a problem,” Remy said.

Sometimes, it was easy to forget that Remy was sick. Mostly because James didn’t like to think about it. They’d only really talked about it in practical terms; he had to take his medication at the same time every day, with a meal. They used condoms. Remy had suggested that James start taking PrEP.

“Are you ok? Did something— are you alright?”

 “You know how I told you I was changing meds? It’s. Well, it’s complicated. Would you hate me if we stayed in?”

Remy worked hard to stay healthy; the yoga, the diet, the sober living. James also knew that there were bad days; days when he was tired or his body ached or his depression got the better of him. And James could hear it in his voice, something was wrong.

“Don’t be stupid,” James said. And of course he didn’t mean that. It came out sounding harsher than he intended. “Of course not.”

Sometimes James wondered if he should do more, be more involved.

“Can we go to yours?” Remy asked. “I’ve been cooped up in my apartment all day.”

 “Are you sure you’re ok?”

There was something tight in his voice. He was not ok. “I’m fine,” Remy said. “It’s just— can I bring Pilot with me?”

James was a fixer. It was his job. And it was the thing he was best at, getting things done. And sometimes he wished he could do that for Remy, that he could fix him; fix everything, pull the right strings, call in some favors and make him better.

“Whatever you need. Of course. I— I have to go. Are you sure you’re ok?”

Remy laughed and hung up the phone.

James spent the rest of the day worrying and snapping at his employees. Even Marci gave him a wide berth. And he left early, issuing threats about what he’d do to them all if things weren’t ready when he got in in the morning.

James could get Remy better doctors, the best doctors, with little to no effort. He could get him into clinical trials. Or hell, James would hire twenty kinds of holistic healers if he thought it would help. But Remy had been clear from the beginning, he could take care of himself.

On the way home James picked up groceries, things he knew that Remy liked. He was waiting for him in the hall when James got there. Pilot was on her leash and she jumped up when James stepped off the elevator.

“I’m sorry.” James fumbled his keys. “How are you? What’s wrong?”

Remy took a couple of the grocery bags from him. “ _Hi sweetheart, nice to see you too._ ”

“Sorry. Hi.” He gave Remy a quick kiss and shoved open the door. “What’s wrong?”

Remy let Pilot off her lead once they were inside. James had bought her a dog bed; well, technically it was two, one in the bedroom and one that sat in a sunny part of the living room and she trotted over to fall into it. He’d gotten her some toys, too. Food and a dish for when Remy brought her over, which was more and more often “You’re spoiling her, you know.”

James dropped the groceries on the counter. “What’s wrong?”

Remy looked tired. He leaned heavily on the counter, stretched his hands out toward James, palms up. “See that?”

His hands were covered in hot looking little red splotches, front and back and they crept up the sleeve of his shirt.

“Oh my god, have you been to the doctor?”

Remy nodded. “Yes. And it’s a pretty common side effect. It’ll go away. I’m just—“

“Is there anything we can do? Does it hurt?”

“No. It’s fine.” There was a manic edge in his voice. Remy wasn’t a very good liar. “The doctor gave me some antihistamines. And it itches and I haven’t slept in days. So I didn’t want to go out. That’s all.”

James took his hands, shoved up his sleeved to uncover more red patchy skin. “Ok. Come on.”

He dragged Remy into the bathroom.

“It’s fine. Really.”

James ran water in the tub. “I got poison oak once, in Central Park, when I was a kid,” he said. “My grandmother made me sit in a bath with epsom salts and oatmeal in it. It was the only thing that—“

“This is not poison oak.”

“I know. I just. I wish…” James took a shaky breath.

“You and me both.” Remy pulled him close and kissed him before he could get carried away, before James’ voice got too hysterical. “So oatmeal, huh?”

“Yeah.”

It turned the water an odd muddy color. James tried not to look too aghast when Remy took off his clothes. The rash had spread up his arms, over his back and chest, down to his thighs.

“It’s worse, isn’t it?”

James shook his head. Maybe he wasn’t much of a liar either. Remy sank into the water with a sigh. After a long few long moments he laughed. And he reached out for James.

“Come’re. Come here.”

He sat on the edge of the tub and Remy laid his wet head on his thigh. “Remind me to thank your grandmother. This is the first time in two days that my whole body didn’t hurt.”

James kissed the top of his head, ran his hands over Remy’s hair, down his shoulders. The rash was creeping up the back of his neck.

 

*

 

James had spent years working through holidays. But now that he had Remy, now that he was with Remy, he somehow had two Thanksgivings to go to.

The first was in Queens. It was early in the afternoon. His grandmother still lived in the old walk up and he’d tried a number of times to talk her into a nicer apartment. But she’d raised her daughter there. Raised him there, too. And it was rent controlled so should hear none of it. The nervousness didn’t fully set in until they were standing in the hall outside her door. James supposed that it was his door, too.

“I… Are you going to knock?” Remy asked.

“No, I have a key.”

He laughed. “Are we going to go in?”

“Yeah, I— Yes.”

Remy looked at his shoes. “Do you want me to go? I can go.”

“No. No.” James nervously smoothed down his tied, and then Remy’s, for maybe the 30th time since they left the house. He took a deep breath. “I just, I’ve never done this before.”

It never failed to surprise him, how the apartment never seemed to change. Everything was the way it had always been and would probably always be. His grandmother was in the dress she always wore for holidays, with the apron that she only wore when she cooked for special occasions. She’d insisted on cooking

“You’re late,” she scolded.

James laughed. “I’m sorry, Babtsya.”

She hugged him, kissed his cheek. “So this is him?” she said, giving Remy a harsh look.

She offered a hand to him. But instead Remy crouched down to hug her. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.” She giggled, completely enveloped in Remy’s arm. It was a sound James had never heard her make before.

They ate early. In James’ fumbling to tell his grandmother that he was bringing his boyfriend to Thanksgiving dinner he had failed to mention that she would also need to adjust her usual holiday menu. He was stricken by this realization as she sat plates down in front of them.

“Oh my god,” James mouthed across the table.

But Remy shushed him. And the whole of the meal James watched him artfully push food around his plate and cherry pick bites of food like he was actually eating. He was utterly charming.

“He’s talked so much about how much he misses your cooking, Ma’am. This really is a lovely meal. We’ll have to do this more often. I wanted to ask you, how old is he in that picture I saw in the hall.”

And James’ grandmother kept giggling.

Remy even helped clear the plates. James excused himself to the restroom. He called Fisk and wished him a happy holiday. And when he came back out Remy and his grandmother were laughing about something.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh nothing.” Remy leaned in close, kissing his cheek, right there in the kitchen of the home he’d grown up in. “She was just telling me about the time you fell in poison oak in central park.”

 

*

 

After, they got a cab to Harlem.

James checked the traffic on his phone. “We’re going to be late.”

“Your grandmother is so lovely,” Remy said. “I’m starving. And she is so sweet.”

“I can top that. She asked me if we’re _allowed_ to get married.” He checked his watch. “So Jan is like your right hand man—“

Remy laughed. “Yeah, but don’t say ‘right hand man’. Also, I may have promised that we would have your grandmother over for Christmas.”

“His wife Alice is…”

Remy pinched his thigh, cocked and eyebrow at their cab driver. “An accountant,” he said.

An accountant in so much as she managed the books of Gao’s legitimate businesses to disguise the revue from the less than reputable ones.

“The kids are Deshi and May.” James pinched the bridge of his nose. “You told me how old they are but I can’t—“

Remy laughed. “You’re going to meet them. And no one is going to quiz you.”

“I know, I just—“

“It’s just dessert. And they’re going to love you.”

They get their eventually and there was a paper hand print turkey taped to the door which as thrown open by small dark haired children in their Sunday best.

“Uncle Remy!” they cheered.

Remy scooped booth of them up in his arms and they both squealed and laughed.

“We went to the parade!” the boy shouted.

And the girl chimed in. “We saw Sponge Bob!”

“Tell me all about it,” Remy said, and hauled them inside.

James was greeted by a man he assumed was Jan. He recognized him from Gao’s security team. Usually he was holding a large caliber weapon and he gave James a stern look and an overly firm handshake. His wife, Alice, was lovely though. 

“Don’t let him scare you. He’s just jealous. And overly protective.” She pulled James into a hug. “Remy talks about you all the time. It’s so good to finally meet you. I hope you like pie. It should be done soon.”

And James realized then that he’d probably spent all those holidays working because he’d have nothing to talk about. Because his job, his life for the most part, was strictly confidential. But now he was in a room mostly full of adults who all worked in the same _industry_ that he did.  

James and Alice drank wine in the kitchen. They groused about business. She did a spot on impression of Leland. James watched Remy laughing with Jan and playing on the floor with the kids while Charlie Brown played on the television. And looking at Jan and Alice it occurred to him for the first time that something like this was even possible; marriage and kids and Charlie Brown and holiday meals.

“What did you mean, when you said he was protective?”

“Well, they’ve known one another since they were kids. And Remy used to be kind of a slut.” 

“Hey,” Remy called back from the living room. “I heard that. And there are children present.”

“He had a rough go of it. Didn’t take care of himself for a long time.” Alice sighed, topped of his wine glass. Her voice dropped low. “Spent time with people that weren’t good for him. And Jan just wants him to be happy.”

The timer dinged on the oven. Remy told the kids to go wash their hands.

James wondered if Remy wanted him to meet his mother. He wondered what they’d cook for Christmas dinner.

“I— is he not happy?”

Alice gave him a big smile. “Honey, he’s happier than I’ve ever seen him.”

 

*

 

James came home with a spray of blood across his face and the front of his suit.

He called Remy.

“I’m coming over,” he said. “I’ll be there soon.”

“Are you ok?”

The line went quiet.

There’d been a shooting. He’d been leaving a meeting. Though he couldn’t, just then, remember where it had been or who had been there, what it had even been about.

The blood was from his driver. He’d been completely run through. James tossed his suit it in the garbage and got in the shower. It took a long time to scrub the blood off his hands. There was more in his hair, too. He found a chunk of something that he thought might be bone but he told himself that it wasn’t bone.

The shower door pulled open.

He’d given Remy a key to his apartment a few weeks earlier.

James did not cry. He did not want to cry

“I don’t know want to say. I feel like I should say something.”

Remy shushed him. He pulled off his clothes and got in, too. There wasn’t blood on him. He hadn’t been shot. But he’d been standing next to someone that was. James had watched it through the windshield, just before bullets had burst through it and the glass had gone cloudy with spider cracks

“I don’t know what to say either.” Remy kissed him, hard enough to knock the breath from him. He let out a choked sob and pressed James up against the shower wall. He’d never seen Remy cry before.

“I saw those bullets go through your car and for a second I thought… For just a second I—“

He kissed James again.

And god, he was hard. They both were. And it didn’t make sense. But nothing really made sense.

“Fuck. _Fuck._ ”

James turned, bracing his hands against the tile. And Remy pressed up flush against him, cock slipping wet between his tighs. It was rough. He was never so rough. And he came hot on James’ skin.

After, Remy helped him wash his hair.

And after, Remy took him to bed. James already had bruises purpling on his hips where his fingers had dug in.

“God, I’m sorry, kitten. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“Don’t. It’s ok.”

“It’s not.”

Remy was more careful there, so careful James could hardly stand it. He kissed him everywhere, touched him everywhere, turned James onto his belly and opened him up with his mouth and fingers. He fucked him slow, like he needed confirmation that James was still there, still whole. And James came shaking apart.

 

*

 

In the morning they had their second fight.

“What was his name?” Remy asked. “Your driver?”

It was still early. They were still in bed but hadn’t slept. Pilot was snoring softly from where she’d sprawled on the carpet.

“I… I don’t know.”

James wondered if this was wrong, if this was the wrong response to have.

“I… I think we should quit,” Remy said. “I think we should both quit and leave and—“

“What do you mean, ‘quit’?”

They didn’t know who’d done the drive by, but James didn’t care.

“I mean we should quit. We should leave, leave these goddamn jobs and this city.”

There were people figuring that out for him.

“We could start our own business; like construction and home renovation. You could design, run the business. I did construction one summer in high school. We’d figure the rest out.”

 James wondered what would happen to the shooters when they were found; what Fisk would do with them, too them.

“Construction? Would you be happy doing that?” James couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Like, renovating other people’s kitchens?”

Remy pulled away from him then. “You mean you wouldn’t be happy doing that.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Remy—“

He was already up, getting out of bed. “Don’t.”

“He would never just let me leave. You know that.”

“What was your driver’s names?”

James sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t.”

He went out into the kitchen. Then the bathroom. James could hear him rattling around, drawers and cabinets opening and slamming shut. He didn’t know if he should follow him.

But Remy came back to bed, threw himself down beside him. “I’m sorry. Christ, I wish I was high.”

James tried to remember the name of his driver.

 

*

 

"Are you seeing someone?" Fisk asked.

James scoffed. "And when would I have time for that?" he said, not looking up from his phone.

It was the first time he had ever lied to Wilson Fisk.

"You haven't been in the office as much these past months."

"No I-" James could hear the suspicion in his voice. He took a deep breath, put his phone in his pocket, straightened reflexively. "I've just- we're doing lots of business with China and the west coast. So I've been keeping odd hours. But things should settle down soon and we'll be back to normal."

Fisk nodded his consent and James fought to look casual as he strolled out of the office.

 

*

 

Fisk got him the new iPhone. 

“Can I see it?” Remy asked.  

Or James assumed it was Fisk. He had come back from an errand and found the box on his desk.  

And he knew that Remy didn’t actually want to see it. He just wanted to take it away.  

“Sorry,” James said.  

It was one of Remy’s pet peeves. And he hated it that James spent so much time on his phone. 

Both he and Remy had gotten out of work late. And by the time they’d made it back to James’ apartment it was early morning. The sun wasn’t up yet. The day was still changing over. And they should have gone to bed but had only made it as far as the sofa.   

It was the model in rose gold and James liked touching it. Gold, that just seemed like something that Fisk would do.  

Remy had picked up scones and coffee from this place that James liked. They were still sitting on the coffee table untouched. He had his head on Remy’s chest and he was rearranging the icons on the home screen just how he liked them.  

Remy’s curled his fingers through his hair and gave a sharp little tug.     

“Hey!”  

James fumbled the phone and Remy snatched it from it. 

“Nice,” he said, hefting it turning it over in his hands. He swiped aimlessly across the screen, opening apps and closing them.  

“Give it back!”  

Remy laughed. “You have no music? And no games? What’s wrong with you?” 

“It’s for work!” James made an unsuccessful grab for it. 

He’d spent most the day painstakingly syncing his data from his old phone, syncing all of that to the cloud. He loved that term; The Cloud.  

“You take a lot of selfies.”  

“I do not— Don’t look at that.”  

Remy was quiet for a moment. “You’re young in some of these.” 

“I used to— when I was _working_ I would…” James stomach turned over and he felt his cheeks go hot.  

He’d kept the pictures all this time and he didn’t know why. It was so long ago now. It was such a waste of data.  

Remy turned the screen to him, flashing a picture that he recognized; one of the early ones, looking terribly thin, unbearably smug.  

 “You were so handsome.”  

“Give it back.”  

“No.”

"I'm sorry," James said again.  

Fisk knew that he would like the gold and that though made him sick.  

James surged forward, kissing him hard. The phone ended up somewhere else. James dragged him out of his shirt, kissed the hollow of his throat, clawed the pocket of Remy’s jeans for a condom. 

“These, off.” 

Remy reigned him in a little, a hand on the back of his neck. "I love you, you know?" 

"Of course I know." And James didn't mean to, but he laughed. "I love you." He kissed him and he laughed. "I love you. I love you, now fuck me." 

Remy made a soft noise, tender and broken sounding, that rose up from someplace deep in his chest. And they were still for a moment. And James thought maybe he stopped breathing then.

Just for a moment.  

Then Remy laughed too. And he pulled James into his lap and oxygen rushed back into the room.  

After, Remy took their picture.  

They'd ended up on the living room floor. James hadn't gotten his shirt all the way off and it hung open, pooled around him. He groaned, hid his face against Remy's chest.  

Remy tugged at his hair. "Don't be like that." 

James sighed and turned on to his back, craning over to kiss him. It turned out all right. The angle was a little funny.  But the light was nice. He set it as the background on his phone- his phone, the phone that Fisk had gifted to him -as a small act of rebellion. 

 

*

 

Remy fell in love with New York City in the winter.

“I get it now,” he said. “Everything is beautiful in the snow. Everyone looks beautiful in a scarf. Dogs are more adorable. You look beautiful with snow in your hair.”

It had been coming down all afternoon and still Remy had still wanted to walk. They’d stopped so he could take a picture of another snow covered brownstone with his cell. James tugged at his elbow. “I’m freezing. And it’s just up around the corner. Come on.”

“Where are we even going? Why are we in _the Village_?”

They stopped once, almost twice more, before they got there. He insisted that they take a selfie. James knew the realtor. She’d given him a set of keys.

“What is this?”

“A town house.”

He shoved open the door and Remy just stood there on the stoop for a long time.

“I can see that. But what are we doing here?”

James took his hand, pulled Remy across the threshold. “We’re looking. Looking at the town house.” He flipped on a few of the lights. “There are three bedrooms. Um, a little yard in the back. I only saw pictures, but the kitchen is supposed to be enormous.”

“X _iǎo māo_ —“

“It needs a little work. And we don’t need three bedrooms. But we could make one a guest room. Turn the other into an office.”

 “James…” He cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Look, we’re just looking. We can look at other places if you don’t like this one. And I—“ He took a deep breath. “It’s not running away from our lives, our jobs, but it would be a place of our own. And blocks away from… everything.”

Remy kissed him. “Three bedrooms, huh?”

“You don’t think it’s a stupid idea?”

He laughed. “I think I could never afford this.”

“Yeah, but I could.”

“Does it have to be the Village?”

James liked Greenwich Village. “Like I said. We can keep looking.”

“So.” Remy smiled, gave him mischievous look. “We’ve got the place to ourselves? To just… look around.”

James rolled his eyes. “The realtor is someone I do business with. We can’t”

“How many bathrooms are there?”

“No. We are not-- No.”

Remy held a hand out to him. “Come on. Let’s go check out the upstairs.”

 

*

 

“You’re a terrible friend,” Necha says. “I mean; I had to find out from your grandmother that you’re seeing someone?”

She snagged two wine glasses from a passing tray and handed on to him. Sara had gotten herself a solo exhibition at Acre.

"This is an amazing turn out," James said. 

“God, I know, right?” Necha pointed to a tall thin woman with blonde hair and an expensive looking dress. “That woman, her name is Potts-something. She was at Sara’s last show and she’s put in bids on three painting tonight.”

Necha still looked exactly the same. And, somehow, completely different. She wore the same shade of lipstick. Her eyeliner was just as sharp.

“So how are you?” James asked. “How’s work? You and Sara have an anniversary coming up, right?”

She was wearing a short white dress, exactly like something she should have worn when they were younger. But now the dress was Givenchy and she stood a little straighter.

“Work is great. Our anniversary was last month.” She batted her eyelashes at him. “Now tell me about this man.”

James checked his phone. No new messages. “He— he’s late. He said he was going to walk the dog and be right over. I don’t know where he could be.”

“He has a dog? Do you even like dogs?”

“I like _his_ dog.” James’ phone started to ring. It was a number he didn’t recognize.

 

*

 

James didn’t have his own gun. But Remy’s wasn’t hard to find; in the drawer on his side of the bed, with some spare change and a black bound journal, a box of ammunition, a handful of condoms and a bottle of aspirin. James hadn’t known that Remy kept a journal and he turned it over and over in his hands before putting it back. He’d been reading Shirley Jackson; the book was split open, face down on the nightstand, to hold his space.

James tucked the gun into his jacket pocket and took the ammunition.

Fisk was working late in his office. The guards didn’t stop him. Why would they? Fisk looked up and smiled as Wesley shoved into his office.

“You’re not supposed to be in until tomorrow—“

Wesley fired. The glass topped desk shattered.

“Why?” Wesley was shaking. His face felt hot. He couldn’t keep his hands or his voice steady. “Why did you take him from me?”

Remy's body had been found in the middle of a crosswalk. The police officer who found him had said it was a hit and run. But there weren’t any witnesses.

Fisk brushed the glass from the lap of his suit. “Wesley, I’m afraid I don’t understand. But you’re obviously upset.”

No one had found the dog.

“You asked me if I was seeing anyone. And now, now he’s....”

“So you lied to me, Wesley? Well. ”

James fired again, into the window just left of Fisk’s head. “Answer me!”

He could hear security come running down the hall.

Fisk held them off with just a wave of his hand. “Wesley, I assure you, I had no idea.”

“Why? Just tell me why. Why couldn’t I have this? This one thing?”

Fisk cocked his head, gave him a slight, sympathetic, smile. “This person, Remy, must have been very important to you.”

His voice cracked and James was afraid he would cry, just break down right there. “You’ll never let me go, will you? You promised. But you’ll never—“

“I’m sorry,” Fisk said, carefully. “For your loss.”

“That’s not necessary.” James tossed down the gun, straightened his tie. “He’s in a coma but he's not dead. Not yet.”

 

*

 

James thought Remy dying could be the worst thing that ever happened to him. But he was wrong.

One of Remy’s neighbors found Pilot. She was dirty and hungry and James had her in the apartment for a few days. Then he called Alice and Jan to come pick her up.

"You know this is your fault, right?" Jan said, his hand's curled into fists at his side.

Alice gave him a withering look. "What he means," she corrected, “is we'll be here if you need anything. You know that, right?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.” He kissed her on the cheek and hugged her. “Thank you, for everything.”

Necha called more often, started coming by his apartment. She kept telling him that she was sorry, but she’d never even met him. James showed her the picture they’d taken in the snow, on the steps of the house they'd bought, a big cliche brownstone in Brooklyn. 

“God, he’s gorgeous,” she said.

Remy’s face had been badly beaten. He had broken ribs, a broken leg, internal injuries. The doctors had had to operate on his back.

“Yeah, he was."

They'd already started packing. More than half of James' apartment was in boxes and Necha was helping him unpack them.

"And he'd convinced you to move out of Manhattan?" she teased.

James hadn't cried. Fisk had already taken too much from him, he though. And he'd refused to. But he broke down then, covered his face with his hands and the tears just came. 

Remy was at high risk for infection, required constant monitoring. And the doctors said that he’d need months of physical therapy when he woke up, if he woke up. And James made sure that it was all paid for.

Fisk called, asked when he was coming back to work. Then he called again and asked who he should call to get a new desk. James ignored him.

Sometimes he wondered if he was wrong, if it really had been a car. But Remy's body was so broken. And Wesley had watched, one to many times, what Wilson Fisk could do to a human form. The damage he could incur. And his finger prints seemed all over it. 

“Do you think I’m going to kill myself?” he asked Necha. “Is that why you keep coming over?”

At first she looked offended. Then she shrugged. “I don’t know. Part of me keeps thinking that it’s what I would do; off myself if Sara ever died. Also, someone needs to make sure you eat, and, like, change your clothes once and a while.”

James had stopped leaving the apartment. 

"I, um. I have news," she said. "Sara and I started looking into adopting." 

He and Remy, they'd never talked about having kids. 

His grandmother called about Christmas dinner. He hadn’t even though to tell her. He told her that Remy had broken up with him, that he’d have to work through the holiday.

One night there was a knock on his door. And he opened it to find Madame Gao on the other side.

Jame’s stared at her, agape. And she laughed, cruelly. “Are you going to invite me in?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Of course.”

She stepped into the apartment alone, no guards or assistants. It was the first time James had ever seen her by herself. 

“I suppose you’ve heard that the boy is awake, finally.” She sighed, “Twenty-three day. It was a long time.”

 _The boy._ Wesley wanted to laugh. And cry. “Yes Ma’am. I had heard. Would you like to sit down, or—”

“No, this won’t take long. He's been asking for you, you know.”

“I— I won’t go,” James said. “I can’t.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” she said coolly, glancing around the apartment.

She didn’t want to sit down, but James thought maybe he needed to. Because for a moment it was too much, too surreal, worlds colliding, Madame Gao in his apartment while he was still in the same pajamas he’s been wearing for two days.

"Once he's well," she said. "I'm sending him back to California, to take care of business for me there." 

James' face fell. "Oh." 

“I’ve never married,” she said. “Never had children. And there’s a reason for that. Which is not to say that I did not want those things, or that I didn’t deserve them. But I simply could not. Do you understand?”

He did. He didn’t want to, but he did. The only thing worse than Remy dying was never seeing him again. And what he understood was that he could never see him again. Because that was the only way to keep him safe.

“You need to go back to work,” said Gao. “Fisk is useless and annoying without you. This is not a request.”

And James nodded. "Yes, Ma'am." He understood this too. 


End file.
